There are significant disparities in the wealth of nations and how incomes are spent. For example, consumers in the poorest countries spend more than half of income on food, whilein the richest countries, this is one-tenth or less. We use the recently published data from theInternational...

Economic growth tends to stimulate fundamental changes in consumption patterns as consumers who get rich tend to spread their spending more evenly across a wider variety of goods and services. Comparing cross sectional spending patterns across rich and poor countries, we investigate how this...