4 research outputs found
Exploring the income distribution business cycle dynamics
We document the business cycle behavior of the US income distribution and explore the extent to which unemployment spells and cyclically-moving factor shares account for this behavior by analyzing four heterogeneous household extensions of the neoclassical growth model. We conclude (i) that partitioning the population into five types subject to type-specific employment processes seems to be enough to account for most aspects of the US income distribution business cycle dynamics, (ii) that the role played by cyclically-moving factor shares is small, and (iii) that the income distribution business cycle dynamics may be essentially independent from the significant part of the observed wealth concentration that these model worlds fail to account for.Publicad
Dimensions of Inequality: Facts on the U.S. Distributions of Earnings, Income, and Wealth
This article describes some facts about financial inequality in the United States that a good theory of inequality must be able to explain. These include the facts that
labor earnings, income, and wealth are all unequally distributed among U.S.
households, but the distributions are significantly different. Wealth is much more
concentrated than the other two. Wealth is positively correlated with earnings and
income, but not strongly. The movement of households up and down the economic
scale is greater when measured by income than by earnings or wealth. Differences
across the three variables remain when the data are disaggregated by age,
employment status, educational level, and marital status of the heads of U.S.
households. Each of these classifications also has significant differences across
households. All the facts are based on data taken from the 1992 Survey of
Consumer Finances and the 1984–85 and 1989–90 Panel Study of Income
Dynamics.Publicad
Updated Facts on the U.S. Distributions of Earnings, Income and Wealth
This article uses data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances and from
recent waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to update a study of
economic inequality in the United States based on 1992 and earlier data. The
article reports data on the U.S. distributions of earnings, income, and wealth and
on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational
attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the economic inequality
among U.S. households in financial trouble and on the economic mobility of
U.S. households. The article finds that earnings, income, and wealth were very
unequally distributed among U.S. households late in the 1990s, just as they had
been at the beginning of the decade. It concludes that the basic facts about
economic inequality in the United States did not change much during the
1990s.Publicad