Empirical regularities in distributions of individual consumption expenditure

We empirically investigate distributions of individual consumption expenditure for four commodity categories conditional on fixed income levels. The data stems from the Family Expenditure Survey carried out annually in the United Kingdom. We use graphical techniques to test for normality and lognormality of these distributions. While prevailing economic theory does not predict any structure for these distributions, we find that in at least three commodity categories individual consumption expenditure conditional on a fixed income level is lognormally distributed.