Assessing The Economic Status Of The Aged And Nonaged Using

The use of income-wealth measures for the analysis of the distribution of economic well-being is examined. While economic status is most commonly measured by income, wealth is also a significant determinant. With the increased availability of data on wealth, income and wealth have been combined into a single measure of economic well-being. The relative well-being of age groups was analyzed using 4 different measures of income and wealth. The estimates of wealth were based on data in the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Wealth was defined in terms of financial assets, and income and wealth were adjusted for household size. It was found that the general results were not very sensitive to the income-wealth measure chosen, at least when wealth was defined to include only financial assets. Differences among measures were somewhat larger when medians were examined than when the bottom of the distribution was analyzed.