Can we know how good future economic growth can be if we do not know how good it has been? Apparent changes in the structure of the economy, notably, the rise of information technology, skill-extensive technical change, and a potential reversion to nonmarket production, will serve to increase the effort needed to maintain our already tenuous grasp on measuring income, wages, and well-being. Piecing together available measures, the United States appears to have been experiencing substantial economic growth as measured by both per-family income and wealth. The well-known dispersion of income by education is evident, with earnings of those with less than high-school education on the decline, but rising for those with college education or more. For families in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) headed by a male aged 25–64, mean family income rose by 11.5 percent, from $58,585 (1997 CPI-U dollars) for 1983 to $65,292 for 1993. If one factors in a 1-percent per annum correction factor to the CPI (Matthew D. Shapiro and David W. Wilcox, 1997; Michael J. Boskin et al., 1998), average real family income grew on the order of 22 percent in 10 years. Rising family income is not explained simply by more workers per family, since the civilian labor-force participation rate rose only 1.5 percentage points, from 65.3 percent in 1986 to 66.8 percent in 1996. Nor does the rise in income appear to be the result of more market hours per week. If anything, hours per worker may have declined, overall. Average weekly hours in the private sector are reported to have changed only trivially, declining from

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[A multivariate errors-in-variables model is used to analyze the propensity to consume from each of several sources of income for a sample of 621 families in a three year (1960-1962) panel study. The analysis provides estimates of the relationships among the transitory components of the various types of income (contemporary and intertemporal) as well as the marginal propensities to consume out of the permanent component of income from each source. Total family income is much more stable than its components, as there is a tendency for changes in head's income to be offset by opposite changes in wife's and transfer income. The marginal propensity to consume out of the permanent component of both the head's and wife's labor income is .9, a result consistent with Friedman's for aggregate income, and implying that growing labor force participation of wives should have no effect on the long run savings rate.]

HE relationship of finance charges to T terms of consumer installment contracts (such as loan size and maturity) and to regional variables has been well established in the literature [8] [12]. Our study demonstrates the importance of the characteristics of the borrower, particularly his overall wealth position, in determining the cost of credit. Although this study examines the determinants of automobile finance rates, the general results should be applicable to the financing of other consumer durables.

C. Russell Hill, Frank P. Stafford; Intergenerational Wealth Transfers and the Educational Decisions of Male Youth: An Alternative Interpretation, The Quar