http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/consumption
The two economists, along with Nikolai Roussanov of the University of
Pennsylvania, have now attacked those questions. What they found not
only provides insight into the economic differences between racial
groups, it challenges common assumptions about luxury. Conspicuous
consumption, this research suggests, is not an unambiguous signal of
personal affluence. It’s a sign of belonging to a relatively poor
group. Visible luxury thus serves less to establish the owner’s
positive status as affluent than to fend off the negative perception
that the owner is poor. The richer a society or peer group, the less
important visible spending becomes.
