Status Aspirations, Wealth Inequality, and Economic Growth

Oded Stark

No 276258, Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF)

Abstract: This paper argues that an increase in the inequality of wealth prompts a stronger quest for status that in turn fosters the accumulation of wealth. It proposes a measure for an individual’s want of social status. For a given level of a population’s wealth, the corresponding aggregate measure of want of social status is shown to be positively related to the Gini coefficient of wealth inequality. Hence the Gini coefficient and growth are positively correlated, holding the population’s wealth constant.

Keywords: Financial Economics; Productivity Analysis; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9
Date: 2005-02-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/276258/files/zef_dp95.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Status Aspirations, Wealth Inequality, and Economic Growth (2006)
Working Paper: Status Aspirations, Wealth Inequality, and Economic Growth (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ubzefd:276258

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.276258

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().