Earnings Inequality and Other Determinants of Wealth Inequality

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
pp. 593-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Benhabib ◽  
Alberto Bisin ◽  
Mi Luo
Keyword(s):  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
Precautionary Savings ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Labor Earnings ◽  
Stochastic Returns ◽  
Savings Rates

We study the relation between the distribution of labor earnings and the distribution of wealth. We show, theoretically as well as empirically, that while labor earnings and precautionary savings are important determinants of wealth inequality factors, they cannot by themselves account for the thick tail of (the large top shares in) the observed distribution of wealth. Other determinants, like stochastic returns to wealth, as well as savings rates and rates of returns increasing in wealth, need to be accounted for.

scholarly journals Accounting for Wealth-Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates, and Simulations for France

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertrand Garbinti ◽  
Jonathan Goupille-Lebret ◽  
Thomas Piketty
Keyword(s):  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Asset Price ◽  
House Price ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
Labor Earnings ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Simple Simulation ◽  
Steady State Levels ◽  
Savings Rates

Abstract Measuring and understanding the evolution of wealth inequality is a key challenge for researchers, policy makers, and the general public. This paper breaks new ground on this topic by presenting a new method to estimate and study wealth inequality. This method combines fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts in order to provide annual wealth distribution series, with detailed breakdowns by percentiles, age, and assets. Using the case of France as an illustration, we show that the resulting series can be used to better analyze the evolution and the determinants of wealth-inequality dynamics over the 1970–2014 period. We show that the decline in wealth inequality ends in the early 1980s, marking the beginning of a rise in the top 1% wealth share, though with significant fluctuations due largely to asset price movements. Rising inequality in savings rates coupled with highly stratified rates of returns has led to rising wealth concentration in spite of the opposing effect of house price increases. We develop a simple simulation model highlighting how changes in the combination of unequal savings rates, rates of return, and labor earnings that occurred in the early 1980s generated large multiplicative effects that led to radically different steady-state levels of wealth inequality. Taking advantage of the joint distribution of income and wealth, we show that top wealth holders are almost exclusively top capital earners, and increasingly fewer are made up of top labor earners; it has become increasingly difficult in recent decades to access top wealth groups with one's labor income only.

scholarly journals The distribution of wealth in Spain and the USA: the role of socioeconomic factors

SERIEs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Salas-Rojo ◽  
Juan Gabriel Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Factors ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Latent Factors ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Value Decomposition ◽  
Counterfactual Decomposition ◽  
Distribution Of Income

AbstractThe literature has typically found that the distribution of socioeconomic factors like education, labor status and income does not account for the remarkable wealth inequality disparities between countries. As a result, their different institutions and other latent factors receive all the credit. Here, we propose to focus on one type of wealth inequality, the inequality of opportunities (IOp) in wealth: the share of overall wealth inequality explained by circumstances like inheritances and parental education. By means of a counterfactual decomposition method, we find that imposing the distribution of socioeconomic factors of the USA into Spain has little effect on total, financial and real estate wealth inequality. On the contrary, these factors play an important role when wealth IOp is considered. A Shapley value decomposition shows that the distribution of education and labor status in the USA consistently increase wealth IOp when imposed into Spain, whereas the opposite effect is found for the distribution of income.

scholarly journals Monetary Policy and Inequality

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 006-017
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Rakviashvili ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
The Past ◽  
High Propensity ◽  
Debt Market ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Economy

The article provides a literature review of studies of the impact of monetary policy on income and wealth inequality. Based on the analysis and systematization of the articles mainly written over the past 25–30 years as well as articles written by central bank authorities, the main approaches to assessing the extent to which the Fed's actions are responsible for the growth of wealth inequality in the United States, which began in the 1970s, are identified. It was revealed that the relative unanimity of economists on this issue was replaced by significant pluralism of opinions after the crisis of 2007–2009. Among other reasons this was caused by the activity of central banks and their use of non-conventional approaches in conducting the monetary policy. In addition, the channels through which the actions of central banks affect the distribution of wealth in the economy are identified. In total, five such channels were singled out. Thus, changes in the monetary policy affect the debt market and the structure of assets and liabilities of households, while households with fixed incomes and with a high propensity to use cash are more likely to suffer losses during the expansionary monetary policy. And the fifth channel, which is less popular among the economists, the "Cantillon effect", leads to an increase in the wealth of the first recipients of the issued money at the expense of those who are farthest from the center of emission. The article provides empirical evidence of why this effect is significant for the American economy, and theoretical arguments indicating that taking the Cantillon effect into account can add certainty to studies of both monetary policy costs and institutional changes caused by rising inequality.

scholarly journals Luxury consumption, precautionary savings and wealth inequality

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Campanale
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Substantial Reduction ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Precautionary Savings ◽  
Luxury Good ◽  
Heterogeneous Agent ◽  
Agent Model ◽  
Macroeconomic Models ◽  
Basic Good ◽  
Earnings Risk

Abstract Most macroeconomic models are based on the assumption of a single homogeneous consumption good. In the present paper we consider a model with two goods: a basic good and a luxury good. We then apply this assumption to a standard general equilibrium heterogeneous agent model. We find a substantial reduction in precautionary savings compared to a standard model. The effect on wealth inequality turns out to be ambiguous and to depend on the size of the assumed earnings risk.

scholarly journals Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data *

2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 519-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Saez ◽  
Gabriel Zucman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Balance Sheets ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Top Incomes ◽  
Tax Returns

Abstract This paper combines income tax returns with macroeconomic household balance sheets to estimate the distribution of wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth: the Survey of Consumer Finance, linked estate and income tax returns, and foundations’ tax records. We find that wealth concentration was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The top 0.1% wealth share has risen from 7% in 1978 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. Top wealth-holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of the economy’s labor income. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth inequality in recent decades is due to the upsurge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality. We explain how our findings can be reconciled with Survey of Consumer Finances and estate tax data.

Labor Earnings Inequality in Manufacturing during the Great Depression

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 531-563
Author(s):  
Felipe Benguria ◽  
Chris Vickers ◽  
Nicolas L. Ziebarth
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
Interquartile Range ◽  
Skill Premium ◽  
Labor Earnings ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Level Information

We study labor earnings inequality during the Great Depression using establishment-level information from the Census of Manufactures (COM). Inequality, as measured by the interquartile range in earnings per worker, declines by 10 log points between 1929 and 1933. However, by 1935, this difference has recovered to its 1929 level. In a decomposition, this decline and then rise in inequality is entirely explained by returns to observable factors, most notably the skill premium and regional differentials. The exit of establishments plays an important role in the initial decline in inequality but barely any role in the recovery.

A People’s Portfolio of the United States

Divested ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Ken-Hou Lin ◽  
Megan Tobias Neely
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Baby Boomer Generation ◽  
Social Class Inequality

This chapter focuses on how finance has transformed household wealth—a trend with long-term implications for how social-class inequality becomes entrenched. It first reviews the uneven distribution of wealth in the United States. Wealth inequality has risen since the last quarter of the 20th century. Today, fewer American families have sufficient means to accumulate wealth over time, and the concentration of capital in the hands of a select few has widened the fault line between the richest and the rest. The chapter also examines how the distribution of wealth has changed across generations—more precisely, what social scientists call “cohorts.” That is, wealth for the baby boomer generation differs greatly from wealth among the millennials. Since wealth accumulation develops over the course of a person’s life, families in young adulthood and near retirement are considered.

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