Year: 1989
Type: report
Abstract: Lifetime income is less variable than annual household income, since the latter reflects transitoty shocks to wages, family status, and employment.This implies that low-income households in one year have some chance of being higher-income households in other years, and significantly affects the estimated distributional burden of excise taxes.This paper shows that household expenditures on gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco as a share of total consumption (a proxy for lifetime income) are much more equally distributed than expenditures as a share of annusl income.From a longer-horizon perspective, excise taxes on these goods are therefore much less regressive than standard analyses suggest.
DOI: 10.3386/w2833
Author: James Poterba
Language: English
Topic: Economic and Fiscal Studies
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W1483384745