Consumption and Social Welfare: Living Standards and their Distribution in the United States

The most widely-cited social welfare statistics in the United States are based on tabulations on family income. The picture that emerges is cause for concern; median family income has hardly changed over the past 25 years while inequality has increased and poverty remained persistently high. Yet, consumption-based statistics as employed in this work yield rigorous and quite different estimates of real individual and social welfare. Closely linked to economic theory, Professor Slesnick's exa...