【08.07.28 经济学人】Cheap and Cheerful 便宜却适宜
【原文标题】Cheap and Cheerful
【登载媒体】The Economist print edition
【来源地址】http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12938&extra=page%3D1
【译者】njudbh
【声明】本文翻译来自兄弟论坛http://www.ecocn.org/,仅供Anti-CNN内部使用，谢绝转载！
【原文】
The long-term rise in American inequality may have been smaller than it appeared
美国日趋严重的不公平分配现象现在看起来可能并没有表现出来的那么严重
POPULISTS and professors rarely see eye to eye. But on at least one fact of economic life, they agree: wage inequality has increased in America since the mid-1980s. Many studies outline the same broad shifts. Workers at the bottom of the wage scale have seen their incomes fall relative to those at the top. Within the top decile, the super-rich have left the merely well-off far behind.
平民主义者与教授很少有意见一致的时候。但是至少在有一方面的经济生活的事实上，他们达成了一致：从20世纪80年代开始美国的工资收入的不公平情况正与日俱增。很多研究论述了大概相同的转变。在工资域底部的工人发现和在顶端的人比他们的收入相对的下降了。在顶端的那些非常富裕的人已经把刚刚小康的人远远地甩在了后面。
Indeed increases in national income this decade have been so skewed towards the rich that, allowing for headline inflation, the spending power of a large chunk of the population has apparently stagnated or even declined. Yet this finding is at odds with the impression of spreading prosperity. Increasing numbers of Americans watch DVDs, rely on dishwashers, enjoy air-conditioning and display other signs of increased material wealth. Are the poor really falling so far behind?
的确这十年来国家收入的增长明显的倾斜向富人，考虑到经常被作为主角的通货膨胀，相当大部分的老百姓会发现他们的支付能力已经明显的停滞甚至在下降。然而这项研究结果与目前我们所表现出来的消费繁荣不相符合。越来越多的美国人观看DVD，需要洗碗机，享受空调等等以及其他表现出物质财富的东西。穷人真的落后的那么远吗？
A challenge to the conventional wisdom is set out in a recent research paper* by Christian Broda and John Romalis, both of the University of Chicago’s business school. They argue that standard measures of inequality do not reflect differences in the way that the rich and poor spend their money. A person’s demand for a particular good or service does not rise in exact proportion to his income. As he grows richer, the pattern of his spending changes, as well as the amount. In particular, high-wage households spend a greater share of their income on services and a smaller share on “non-durable” items, such as food, clothing, footwear and toiletries.
芝加哥大学商学院的Christian Broda和 John Romalis根据最近的一项调查研究结果所发表的文章对人们传统的观点提出了挑战。他们认为标准的测量不平均分配标准的方法没有反映出来穷人与富人花钱的区别。一个人对于特定的物品或者服务的需求并没有在其收入中按精确的比例增加。当一个人变的富有，他花钱的方式就会改变，高工资的家庭把他们收入的大部分用于对于服务的消费，小部分的收入用于快速消费品上，比如说食物、衣服、鞋类和化妆品。
For most of the past three decades, the price of non-durable goods has been falling relative to the price of the services—investment advice, personal care, domestic help and so on—that the rich spend more of their money on. If these differences between the inflation rates faced by the rich and the poor are taken into account, the rise in inequality is reduced and may even vanish.
在过去三十年的大多数时间里，快速消费品的价格相对于诸如投资建议、私人护理、家政服务等等服务的价格是在下降，而对于这些服务富人则消费更多。如果把穷人和富人面对的不同的通货膨胀率考虑进去的话，不公平分配的增长将被削弱甚至不存在。
To back these claims up, the authors constructed price indices for 12 income groups, using official figures and detailed private information on the spending habits of different households. This data set, created by shoppers themselves using in-store scanners, records the type of goods bought by various income groups between 1994 and 2005, as well as the prices paid for them.
为了支持他们自己所发表的声明，作者（指芝加哥大学的那两个教授）编制了12个收入群体的价格指数，在编制的过程中他们利用了官方的数据和详细的关于不同家庭消费习惯的私人信息。这套由消费者自己利用商店里扫描机所产生的数据记录了从1994到2005年不同的消费群体所购买商品的种类以及他们为此所付出的价格。
The Chicago economists found that the share of non-durable spending for the very poorest households was 12 percentage points higher than for the richest households. Because the price of services rose by more than the price of goods during this period, the inflation rate for the rich was far higher than that for the poor. Rich households also buy dearer versions of the same goods than poor consumers. For each product category—a 16-ounce carton of milk, say—well-off households paid an average of 25% more than poor households. This is not because the rich are gullible shoppers but rather, say the authors, because they tend to buy goods of better quality (such as organic milk), the prices of which are higher and tend to rise more quickly.
芝加哥大学的经济学家发现对于快速消费品占消费的份额最穷的那一组家庭比最富的那一组家庭高出12%。因为在这一段时期内，服务的价格比商品的价格增长的快很多，所以对于富人来说通胀指数就要远高于穷人。富裕的家庭即使对于和穷人同样的消费品，他们也会买更贵的。对于每一种产品种类，就拿16盎司的盒装牛奶来说，小康家庭比贫穷家庭平均要多花费25%。据作者说道，这到不是因为有钱人是容易上当的消费者，而是因为他们更倾向于购买更高品质的牛奶（例如有机牛奶），这种牛奶就更高一点并且涨价的更快。
These differences matter when considering inequality. One standard measure compares the income of a household just below the top 10% of earners with one just above the bottom 10%. The richer household earned 10.6 times more than the poorer one in 1994; that multiple rose to 11.2 in 2005 (see left-hand chart). But according to the authors, this ratio exaggerates how far the poor have been left behind because it does not account for different inflation rates. A fuller picture would consider shifts in relative prices as well as in relative incomes.
当我们考虑到分配不公平的时候这些区别就显得重要了。一项标准的计量方法是把收入前10%和收入后10%的人做比较。在1994年更富裕的家庭的收入是穷家庭的10.4倍，这个倍数在2005增加至11.2（见左图）。但是据作者所说，这个比例过分夸大了穷人的落后因为其并没有考虑到各自所需面对的不同的通胀率。一个更全面的做法是不仅要考虑相对收入的差距，也要考虑相对价格的变化。
Mr. Broda and Mr. Romalis reckon that around two-thirds of the increase in the standard inequality gauge since 1994 is offset by the poor’s lower inflation rate. They find a similar result when they extend their analysis on spending patterns to price and income figures dating back to 1984. That is not all. Their data on shopping habits show that the range of goods consumed by poor households increased by far more than for rich households. The benefit of this extra variety is not captured in income or inflation, but it can be quantified. If that gain is expressed as an addition to real income, the remaining increase in inequality vanishes.
Broda先生和Romails断定根据我们标准的不平均分配的测量标尺来看我们三分之二的差距增长将会被穷人更低的通胀率所抵消。当他们把他们的消费分析模式扩展到追溯到1984年的价格和收入的数据时，也得到了相似的结果。然而这也不是全部，他们关于消费习惯的数据也说明贫穷家庭的商品消费范围比富裕家庭扩大的快很多。这种额外多样化的好处并没有在收入和通胀里显示出来，但是可以数量化。如果把这种好处加入到真实收入的范畴里，那么剩下的不平均分配的增长就消失了。
The authors matched their figures on non-durable spending with equally detailed import data, and discovered that increased trade with China (see right-hand chart) helped lower prices and widen variety. “The poor tend to shop in the aisles of the supermarket where the presence of Chinese goods has increased most,” says Mr. Broda. These are also the aisles where prices have fallen fastest. The authors reckon that low-cost imports from China alone offset more than a quarter of the measured rise in income inequality since 1994.
作者把他们关于快速消费品的消费数据与相对详细的进口数据相比较，他们发现与中国贸易的增长（见右图）有助于降低价格和扩大消费的多样化。Broad先生说“穷人常常在超市里消费，而在这里恰恰中国的商品的上架率增长的最快。”而在这里通常也是价格降低最快的地方。作者认为从1994年开始从中国进口的低成本商品就单这一项就抵消我们计算得到的收入不均衡增长率超过四分之一。
Let them drink organic milk
让他们喝有机牛奶
One obvious rejoinder to these findings is, as Mr. Broda concedes, that the recent surge in oil and food prices has hit the poor hardest. Yet to acknowledge this is also to recognise that price changes affect income groups in different ways, depending on how they dole out their money. The run-up in commodity prices has reversed only a small part of the trend of the previous two decades, when the prices of services rose relative to those of non-durable goods. Another possible objection is that if the price of goods that the poor do not habitually consume, but may aspire to, goes up, many will still think them worse off, because those goods are farther out of reach. Nevertheless, if what they typically buy becomes cheaper, they are surely still better off.
如Broad先生承认的那样，一个对于这些发现明显的回答就是最近油价和食品价格的飞速增长对穷人的伤害最大。然而承认这一点也就是承认价格的变化以不同的方式影响不同的收入群体，这就取决于消费者如何分配自己的收入。在过去20年间商品价格的持续上涨只是改变了小部分的消费倾向，而服务的价格相对于那些快速消费品的价格在上涨。另一个可能的反对的理由就是如果非穷人们习惯消费、但是渴望消费的消费品的价格上涨了，很多人仍然认为他们的情况变坏了，因为这些商品是穷人可望不可即的。尽管如此，如果他们通常消费的商品价格变便宜了，那么他们的情况就变好了。
The analysis could also be challenged on its own turf. The research focuses on falling goods prices. But the rising price of some services—health care, for example—may partly reflect quality improvements which, if correctly adjusted for, would bring down the inflation rate of the rich. At the very least, however, the research makes a provocative case that income inequality needs to be thought through carefully; and that the increase in Chinese imports offers some clear benefits to low-wage Americans.
他们的分析本身也有其难圆其说的地方。研究的主要着眼于下降的商品价格。但是诸如医疗卫生等服务类价格的上涨能部分的反应质量的提高，如果价格的提高经过合理的修正以后，会降低富人的通胀率。然而至少这项研究所说明令人气愤的收入不平等的问题需要经过慎重的考虑。而且从中国进口的商品为美国的低收入家庭带来了明显的好处。
[ 本帖最后由 gmygmy 于 2008-8-1 16:16 编辑 ] | 
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