IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2012-147.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation and Income Inequality: Is Food Inflation Different?

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. James P Walsh
  • Jiangyan Yu

Abstract

There is an extensive literature noting that high inflation can add to income inequality, and a parallel literature assessing the effect of rising food prices on the poor. This paper attempts to combine these strands by dividing inflation into food and nonfood inflation and assessing whether food inflation affects income inequality differently from nonfood inflation. In an international sample and a sample of Chinese provinces, nonfood inflation exacerbates income inequality while the role of food inflation is more mixed. In a sample of Indian states broken down into urban and rural areas, we find that nonfood inflation adds to income inequality in both areas, while food inflation has a neutral to positive effect on income inequality in rural areas, providing support for the theory that rural wages may respond elastically to food prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. James P Walsh & Jiangyan Yu, 2012. "Inflation and Income Inequality: Is Food Inflation Different?," IMF Working Papers 2012/147, International Monetary Fund.
  • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2012/147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=25970
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christina D. Romer & David Romer, 1999. "Monetary policy and the well-being of the poor," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 84(Q I), pages 21-49.
    2. Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Leite, Phillippe G. & Litchfield, Julie A., 2008. "The Rise And Fall Of Brazilian Inequality: 1981–2004," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(S2), pages 199-230, September.
    3. Jim Dolmas & Gregory W. Huffman & Mark A. Wynne, 2000. "Inequality, inflation, and central bank independence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(1), pages 271-287, February.
    4. Ravallion, Martin, 2000. "Prices, wages and poverty in rural India: what lessons do the time series data hold for policy?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 351-364, June.
    5. Easterly, William & Fischer, Stanley, 2001. "Inflation and the Poor," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(2), pages 160-178, May.
    6. Wodon, Quentin & Tsimpo, Clarence & Backiny-Yetna, Prospere & Joseph, George & Adoho, Franck & Coulombe, Harold, 2008. "Potential impact of higher food prices on poverty : summary estimates for a dozen west and central African countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4745, The World Bank.
    7. Gaurav Datt & Martin Ravallion, 1998. "Farm productivity and rural poverty in India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 62-85.
    8. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will, 2008. "Implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low-income countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4594, The World Bank.
    9. Jonathan S. Skinner, 1987. "Taxation and Output Growth: Evidence from African Countries," NBER Working Papers 2335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Warr, Peter G., 2005. "Food policy and poverty in Indonesia: a general equilibrium analysis," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1-23.
    11. Andrew G. Berg & Jonathan D. Ostry, 2017. "Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(4), pages 792-815, November.
    12. Rashid, Shahidur, 2002. "Dynamics of agricultural wage and rice price in Bangladesh," MSSD discussion papers 44, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    13. Quentin Wodon & Hassan Zaman, 2010. "Higher Food Prices in Sub-Saharan Africa: Poverty Impact and Policy Responses," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 25(1), pages 157-176, February.
    14. Blejer, Mario I & Guerrero, Isabel, 1990. "The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Income Distribution: An Empirical Study of the Philippines," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(3), pages 414-423, August.
    15. Deaton, Angus, 1989. "Rice Prices and Income Distribution in Thailand: A Non-parametric Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(395), pages 1-37, Supplemen.
    16. Wodon, Quentin & Zaman, Hassan, 2008. "Rising food prices in Sub-Saharan Africa : poverty impact and policy responses," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4738, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tatiana Ryzhikova & Anastasiya Skuratova, 2023. "Bank of Russia Monetary Policy and Household Consumption Expenditure," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 82(1), pages 3-31, March.
    2. Carlos Garcimartín & Jhonatan Astudillo & André Martínez, 2021. "Inflation and income distribution in Central America, Mexico, Panama, and the Dominican Republic," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 315-339, February.
    3. Filippidis, Michail & Tzouvanas, Panagiotis & Chatziantoniou, Ioannis, 2021. "Energy poverty through the lens of the energy-environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    4. Serhan Cevik & Carolina Correa-Caro, 2020. "Growing (un)equal: fiscal policy and income inequality in China and BRIC+," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 634-653, October.
    5. Sadullah Çelik & Deniz Şatıroğlu, 2015. "A Reality Check on the Relationship between Poverty and Income Inequality for Turkey," EY International Congress on Economics II (EYC2015), November 5-6, 2015, Ankara, Turkey 229, Ekonomik Yaklasim Association.
    6. Muhammad Abdullah & Rukhsana Kalim, 2016. "Impact of Global Food Price Escalation on Poverty in South Asian Countries," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 543-559.
    7. Bagchi, Sutirtha & Curran, Michael & Fagerstrom, Matthew J., 2019. "Monetary growth and wealth inequality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 23-25.
    8. N'Yilimon Nantob, 2015. "Income Inequality and Inflation in Developing Countries: An Empirical Investigation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(4), pages 2888-2902.
    9. Ryu, Hang K. & Slottje, Daniel J., 2017. "Maximum entropy estimation of income distributions from Basmann’s weighted geometric mean measure," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 199(2), pages 221-231.
    10. Sanjaya Acharya & Mohamed Ileas Mia, 2020. "Inflation, Growth, and Distribution Nexus in Post-Transition and Emerging Economies of South Asia," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 368-383, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wodon, Quentin & Zaman, Hassan, 2008. "Rising food prices in Sub-Saharan Africa : poverty impact and policy responses," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4738, The World Bank.
    2. Sami Bibi & Massa Coulibaly & John Cockburn & Luca Tiberti, 2009. "L'impact de la hausse des prix des produits alimentaires sur la pauvreté des enfants et les reponses politiques au Mali," Papers inwopa09/60, Innocenti Working Papers.
    3. Negi, Digvijay S., 2022. "Global food price surge, in-kind transfers and household welfare: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    4. Dawe, David & Maltsoglou, Irini, 2014. "Marketing margins and the welfare analysis of food price shocks," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 50-55.
    5. Sami Bibi & John Cockburn & Massa Coulibaly & Luca Tiberti, 2009. "The Impact of the Increase in Food Prices on Child Poverty and the Policy Response in Mali," Papers inwopa09/66, Innocenti Working Papers.
    6. Nouve, Kofi & Wodon, Quentin, 2008. "Impact of rising rice prices and policy responses in Mali : simulations with a dynamic CGE model," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4739, The World Bank.
    7. Tsimpo, Clarence & Wodon, Quentin, 2008. "Rice prices and poverty in Liberia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4742, The World Bank.
    8. Digvijay S. Negi, 2022. "Global food price surge, in-kind transfers, and household welfare evidence from India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2022-006, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    9. Wodon, Quentin & Tsimpo, Clarence & Backiny-Yetna, Prospere & Joseph, George & Adoho, Franck & Coulombe, Harold, 2008. "Potential impact of higher food prices on poverty : summary estimates for a dozen west and central African countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4745, The World Bank.
    10. Muhammad Abdullah & Rukhsana Kalim, 2016. "Impact of Global Food Price Escalation on Poverty in South Asian Countries," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 543-559.
    11. G. Jacoby , Hanan & Dasgupta, Basab, 2014. "Household Exposure to Food Price Shocks in Rural Bangladesh," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 37(1-2), pages 83-100, March-Jun.
    12. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will & Zaman, Hassan, 2012. "Estimating the Short-Run Poverty Impacts of the 2010–11 Surge in Food Prices," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(11), pages 2302-2317.
    13. Nora Lustig, 2009. "Coping with Rising Food Prices: Policy Dilemmas in the Developing World," Working Papers 0907, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    14. Vu, Linh Hoang, 2012. "Poverty Impact Of The Food Crisis On Poverty In Cambodia," MPRA Paper 94799, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. N'Yilimon Nantob, 2015. "Income Inequality and Inflation in Developing Countries: An Empirical Investigation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(4), pages 2888-2902.
    16. Patrizio Tirelli & Maria Ferrara, 2020. "Disinflation, Inequality, And Welfare In A Tank Model," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1297-1313, July.
    17. Hanan G. Jacoby, 2016. "Food Prices, Wages, And Welfare In Rural India," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(1), pages 159-176, January.
    18. Pedro Conceição & Sebastian Levine & Zuzana Brixiova, "undated". "The Food Price Spikes of 2008/09 and 2010/11: Impacts and Policies in African Countries," UNDP Africa Policy Notes 2011-003, United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Africa.
    19. Wodon, Quentin & Tsimpo, Clarence & Coulombe, Harold, 2008. "Assessing the potential impact on poverty of rising cereals prices : the case of Ghana," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4740, The World Bank.
    20. David Dawe, 2014. "Transmission of global food prices, supply response and impacts on the poor," Chapters, in: Raghbendra Jha & Raghav Gaiha & Anil B. Deolalikar (ed.), Handbook on Food, chapter 5, pages 100-121, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2012/147. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.