This paper presents estimates of the distributional welfare impacts ofthe actual price rises of energy and nonenergy commodities during the1970-80 decade in the United States. Measures of welfare changes basedon net compensating variations are computed for families that differ with respect to demographic characteristics, initial total expenditurelevels, and total expenditure growth profiles over the decade. For comparison, measures of welfare change based solely on the changes inenergy prices are computed. The author shows that welfare differencesdue to initial expenditure levels or demographic profiles are minor incomparison to welfare differences due to different expenditure growthprofiles.

This paper presents estimates of the distributional welfare impacts of the actual price rises of energy and nonenergy commodities during the 1970-80 decade in the United States. Measures of welfare change based on net compensating variations are computed for different types of families. These show that welfare differences due to changes in commodity prices are minor compared to welfare differences due to different income growth patterns over the decade.