This paper examines inequality in both leisure and consumption over the past four decades using time use surveys stretching from 1975 to 2016. We show that individual and family characteristics, especially when including work hours, explain most of the long run variation in leisure. We then use...

In the U.S., analyses of poverty rates and the effects of anti-poverty programs rely almost exclusively on income data. In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data to measure the well-being of the poor, and, on...

Official income inequality statistics indicate a sharp rise in inequality over the past five decades. These statistics do not accurately reflect inequality because income is poorly measured, particularly in the tails of the distribution, and current income differs from permanent income, failing...

We examine the relationship between the business cycle and poverty for the period from 1960 to 2008 using income data from the Current Population Survey and consumption data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. This new evidence on the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and poverty...

This paper addresses the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing timely and accurate information on the impact of the current pandemic on income and poverty to inform the targeting of resources to those most affected and assess the success of current efforts. We construct new...

This paper investigates how material well-being has changed over time for those at the bottom of the distributions of income and consumption. We document the sharp differences between recent trends in measured income and consumption, focusing on families headed by a single mother. Since the...