IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/bocoec/382.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Changes in Home Production and Trends in Economic Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Gottschalk

    (Boston College)

  • Susan E. Mayer

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract

Previous studies of trends in inequality have ignored changes in the distribution of home production. This paper asks whether including the value of home production affects the trend in inequality of families. During the 1980s household money income grew at a slow rate but inequality increased. At the same time home production declined somewhat overall, but it declined more for high income households than for low income household. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data we develop three methods to adjust household money income for the value of home production. We then compare trends in the level and distribution of these measures of adjusted income to the trends in the level and distribution of money income. Income adjusted for the value of home production is more equally distributed than unadjusted income, but inequality of adjusted income grew during the 1980s. These conclusions are the same regardless of the method for adjusting income.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Gottschalk & Susan E. Mayer, 1997. "Changes in Home Production and Trends in Economic Inequality," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 382, Boston College Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:382
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp382.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2007. "Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 969-1006.
    2. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2006. "Measuring trends in leisure," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    3. Frick, Joachim R. & Grabka, Markus M. & Groh-Samberg, Olaf, 2012. "The Impact of Home Production on Economic Inequality in Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 43(3), pages 1143-1169.
    4. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2007. "Time to Eat: Household Production under Increasing Income Inequality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 852-863.
    5. Harley Frazis & Jay Stewart, 2011. "How does household production affect measured income inequality?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(1), pages 3-22, January.
    6. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Klara Sabirianova Peter & Dmitriy Stolyarov, 2010. "Inequality and Volatility Moderation in Russia: Evidence from Micro-Level Panel Data on Consumption and Income," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 209-237, January.
    7. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri & Luigi Pistaferri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Cross Sectional Facts for Macroeconomists," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 1-14, January.
    8. Maria Cancian & Deborah Reed, 1999. "The impact of wives’ earnings on income inequality: Issues and estimates," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 36(2), pages 173-184, May.
    9. Harley Frazis & Jay Stewart, 2006. "How Does Household Production Affect Earnings Inequality?: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_454, Levy Economics Institute.
    10. Heikkilä, Anni & Piekkola, Hannu, 2003. "Economic Inequality and Household Production - The Effects of Specialization of Genders," Discussion Papers 867, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    11. Cathleen Zick & W. Bryant & Sivithee Srisukhumbowornchai, 2008. "Does housework matter anymore? The shifting impact of housework on economic inequality," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 1-28, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    home production; income inequality;

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:382. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debocus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.