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Expenditure and Disposable Income Trends of UK Households: Evidence from Micro-Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Justin van de Ven
Justin van de Ven*
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
*
1 e-mail:jvandeven@niesr.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The view that there is an ‘under-savings’ problem in the UK domestic sector has had an important bearing on the contemporary agenda for policy reform. This paper considers the temporal variation of household expenditure and disposable income described by micro-data observed during the past four decades (1971 to 2009). I find a very close correspondence between the growth of expenditure and disposable income over the sample period, with the implication that households have not offset the well-documented decline in occupational pension provisions during the period through increased private saving out of disposable income.

Keywords

Under-savingretirementexpendituredisposable incomeD12D14D31D91

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 218 , October 2011 , pp. R44 - R57
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

I am most grateful to Martin Weale and Cormac O'Dea for helpful advice regarding comparisons between the micro-data and the National Accounts. The usual disclaimer applies.

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