Journal of Economic Literature - Book Review

Inequality in Living Standards since 1980: Income Tells Only a Small Part of the Story by Orazio P. Attanasio, Erich Battistin and Mario Padula

Published By: Washington, D.C.: AEI Press; distributed by Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Md.
ISBN: 978-0-8447-4366-0, cloth; 978-0-8447-4368-4, pbk.
Date of Publication: 2011

Christopher J. Flinn of New York University and Collegio Carlo Alberto reviews "Inequality in Living Standards since 1980: Income Tells Only a Small Part of the Story" by Orazio P. Attanasio, Erich Battistin, and Mario Padula. The EconLit abstract of the reviewed work begins, "Examines the currently incomplete picture of inequality in the United States offered by study of the evolution of income and wage inequality and considers a more complete evaluation that incorporates the study of consumption. Discusses consumption inequality versus wage and income inequality; measurement issues; recent trends on wages and household income inequality; expenditure and consumption; income and expenditure poverty--how they differ; and relating consumption and income inequality. Attanasio is Professor of Economics at University College London, Research Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Evaluation of Development Policies at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the codirector of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy. Battistin is Associate Professor of Econometrics in the School of Business and Economics at the University of Padova and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies. Padula is Associate Professor of Econometrics at the University ""Ca' Foscari'' and Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance at the University of Naples. No index."

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Christopher J. Flinn of New York University and Collegio Carlo Alberto

D31: Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
I31: General Welfare