研究 Consumption Inequality: Where does your city rank?

Income 和 wealth inequality have gained prominence in the national conversation following the pioneering work of Piketty 和 赛斯, but what about consumption inequality? As 米安和苏菲指出, data limitations have prevented economists from examining consumption inequality as closely. 12号楼.40亿年 匿名 credit 和 debit card transactions in 15 metropolitan areas, the 澳博官方网站app 研究所"s recently released Profiles of Local Consumer Commerce 阐明了这个问题.¹ Local commerce spending by consumers in the top income quintile is one indicator of consumption inequality. By this measure, we find that there are considerable differences across cities.

The San Francisco 和 New York metro areas had the largest share of local consumer commerce spending by the top income quintile. In these cities the top 20 percent of earners spent 35.9和33.分别为2%. San Francisco 和 New York are known for their tech 和 finance sectors 和 the resulting boom for top earners. Top income quintile consumers in San Francisco 和 New York earned at least $167,800元及141元,2014年分别为800人, 与109美元相比,为国家贡献100. The bottom income quintile in San Francisco only made up 8 percent of the spending, the lowest of any of the fifteen cities. In New York, the bottom quintile spent the third least at 12.2%.

Not all cities have such extremes in consumption inequality. 令人惊讶的是, top quintile consumers in Portl和 和凤凰城 accounted for less than twenty percent of everyday spending. This means high earners spent less than low earners. In fact, the lowest income quintile in Phoenix consumed the most of any quintile at 21.5 percent of local commerce spending 和 the middle income quintile in Portl和 made up the largest share of spending at 21.9%.

Another way to gauge consumption inequality is to plot a "Consumption Inequality Curve," shown below. We plot cumulative consumption against the income percentile for three selected cities: San Francisco, 圣地亚哥, 和凤凰城. San Francisco is the most unequal city in our data 和 the Consumption Inequality Curve rises slowly through the first several quintiles before rising steeply for the highest earners. Phoenix is anomalous in that the lowest income quintiles actually consume more than the top quintile, which can be seen by the consumption inequality curve passing above the line of equality, where all income quintiles consume an equal amount. 圣地亚哥, 我们排名的中间城市, falls in between; similar to the shape of the curve for San Francisco, but hewing closer to the line of equality.

资料来源:澳博官方网站app研究所

One reason policy makers care about income 和 wealth inequality measures is they indirectly inform the inequality of consumption by individuals in an economy. Our Profiles of Local Consumer Commerce data allow us to directly measure everyday consumption inequality, 而且, to show that this important measure of economic well-being varies substantially across cities.

The 澳博官方网站app 研究所 is committed to delivering data-rich analyses 和 expert insights for the public good. 我们最近发布的报告 Profiles of Local Consumer Commerce tells the story of the decline in everyday retail spending across fifteen metro areas. 在接下来的五个星期, the JPMC 研究所 will explore the differences between the metro areas through a series of blog posts ranking the cities across select dimensions from the report.