This Paper uses panel data on household consumption and income to evaluate the degree of insurance to income shocks. Our aim is to describe the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality. Our framework nests the special cases of self-insurance and the complete markets...

This paper uses panel data on household consumption and income to describe the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality. We do this by contrasting shifts in the cross-sectional distribution of income growth with shifts in the cross-sectional distribution of consumption...

This paper places the debate over using consumption or income in studies of inequality growth in a formal intertemporal setting. It highlights the importance of permanent and transitory income uncertainty in the evaluation of growth in consumption inequality.We derive conditions under which the...

This paper describes the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality and in so doing investigates the degree of insurance to income shocks. It combines panel data on income from the PSID with consumption data from repeated CEX cross-sections and distinguishes between permanent...