Inferring Inequality With Home Production

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Boerma, Job; Karabarbounis, Loukas
• 署名单位: University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; National Bureau of Economic Research; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: ECONOMETRICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0012-9682
• DOI: 10.3982/ECTA15966
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 2517-2556
• 关键词: household production; consumption inequality; time use; welfare; insurance; cycle; RISK; allocation; education; GROWTH

摘要

We revisit the causes, welfare consequences, and policy implications of the dispersion in households' labor market outcomes using a model with uninsurable risk, incomplete asset markets, and home production. Allowing households to be heterogeneous in both their disutility of home work and their home production efficiency, we find that home production amplifies welfare-based differences, meaning that inequality in standards of living is larger than we thought. We infer significant home production efficiency differences across households because hours working at home do not covary with consumption and wages in the cross section of households. Heterogeneity in home production efficiency is essential for inequality, as home production would not amplify inequality if differences at home only reflected heterogeneity in disutility of work.