Family Size and the Distribution of Per Capita Income

18 Pages Posted: 23 Apr 2004 Last revised: 20 Aug 2022

See all articles by Edward P. Lazear

Edward P. Lazear

Stanford Graduate School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Robert T. Michael

University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: 1981

Abstract

This paper is another contribution to the vast literature which addresses this issue: comparison of household income per capita among households of different structures requires judgment about the relationship between real income and family size. Our work uses a revealed preference approach in which household size/structure variables are included in empirical demand studies and the estimated coefficients on these variables are used to infer equivalence; it differs from many of the other studies not in basic concept but in its empirical strategy. While most studies build family composition effects into a relatively formal structural model of demand and impose considerable restriction in order to obtain an estimable system, we use a reduced-form approach which requires much less of the data.

Suggested Citation

Lazear, Edward P. and Michael, Robert T., Family Size and the Distribution of Per Capita Income (1981). NBER Working Paper No. w0230, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=260421

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