Collective household welfare and intra-household inequality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chavas, Jean-Paul; Menon, Martina; Pagani, Elisa; Perali, Federico
• 署名单位: University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Verona
• 刊物名称: THEORETICAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1555-7561
• DOI: 10.3982/TE2459
• 发表日期: 2018-05-01
• 页码: 667-696
• 关键词: Collective household model; sharing rule; household welfare; intrahousehold inequality; Theil index

摘要

We investigate the relationship between the individual and household indirect utility functions in the context of a collective household model. Our analysis produces new results that explain howthe rule governing the distribution of resources among household members is related to the measurement of household welfare and intra-household inequality. We show that in a collective model of private consumption, income shares are equal to the product of two weights: the Pareto weight and a distribution weight reflecting income effects across individuals. For a weighted Bergsonian representation of household utility and general assumptions about individual preferences, we derive the associated household welfare functions and intra-household inequality measures belonging to a family of entropy indexes. We illustrate our findings with an empirical application that estimates a collective demand system to recover associated individual and household welfare functions along with the measures of intra-household inequality. This is the first application that estimates the Pareto weight and examines its role within a measure of income dispersion among household members.