Income, Wealth and Consumption Inequality

The purpose is to try to understand what is the real situation of families and individuals
across countries and socio-economic categories. For those of them still at work we are interested
to know how they are preparing for old days’ consumption, and, for those already
retired, how they meet their old age needs. We know that for some of them, facing liquidity
constraints or bad health, consumption will be restricted, whereas others will be able to
save from their current income, while a third group will be composed of net dissavers.
In this contribution, we are particularly interested in the distributive issues pertaining
to these three dimensions taken together. In the first section we explain some data issues
and methodological choices. The second section is devoted to the presentation of Lorenz
curves and Gini coefficients by macro-regions and countries, and the third section to a
comparative study of I-C-W distribution across age categories. Some conclusions and
potential lines of research for the future end this contribution.