Affluence and Food: A Simple Way to Infer Incomes

Accurate and timely measures of cross-country real incomes are still a rarity. As the share of expenditure devoted to food is readily available, we use Engel's law in reciprocal form to measure affluence. Analysis of real income data for over 100 countries indicates that this approach is viable. To recognize the role of uncertainty in the analysis, we present the results in the form of stochastic cross-country income comparisons. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.