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Income risk, income mobility and welfare

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  • Krebs, Tom
  • Krishna, Pravin
  • Maloney, William F.

Abstract

This paper develops a framework for the quantitative analysis of individual income dynamics, mobility and welfare. Individual income is assumed to follow a stochastic process with two (unobserved) components, component representing measurement error or transitory income shocks and an Autoregressive (AR(1)) component representing persistent changes in income. The analysis uses a tractable consumption-saving model with labor income risk and incomplete markets to relate income dynamics to consumption and welfare, and derive analytical expressions for income mobility and welfare as a function of the various parameters of the underlying income process. The empirical application of the framework using data on individual incomes from Mexico provides striking results. Much of measured income mobility is driven by measurement error or transitory income shocks and therefore (almost) welfare-neutral. A smaller part of measured income mobility is due to either welfare-reducing income risk or welfare-enhancing catching-up of low-income individuals with high-income individuals, both of which have economically significant effects on social welfare. Decomposing mobility into its fundamental components is thus seen to be crucial from the standpoint of welfare evaluation.

Suggested Citation

  • Krebs, Tom & Krishna, Pravin & Maloney, William F., 2012. "Income risk, income mobility and welfare," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6254, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6254
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Much of observed income mobility is measurement error
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2013-03-20 19:19:00

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    Cited by:

    1. Thiagu Ranganathan & Amarnath Tripathi & Ghanshyam Pandey, 2016. "Income Mobility among Social Groups in Indian Rural Households: Findings from the Indian Human Development Survey," Working Papers id:10933, eSocialSciences.
    2. Gary Fields & Robert Duval-Hernández & Samuel Freije & María Sánchez Puerta, 2015. "Earnings mobility, inequality, and economic growth in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(1), pages 103-128, March.
    3. Bird, Richard M. & Zolt, Eric M., 2015. "Fiscal Contracting in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 323-335.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Theory&Research; Inequality; Labor Policies; Roads&Highways; Income;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

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