Changes in the Distribution of Alter-Tax Wealth: Will Wealth Tax Improve the Wealth Distribution Inequality in the United States?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinye Yang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wealth Tax

Evidence on Income Inequality in the United States, 1866–1965

1969 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee C. Soltow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Personal Income ◽  
Income Groups

It is commonly thought that income distribution among people became more concentrated after the Civil War and that this direction continued until the turn of the century. We can look methodically at the income tax distributions from the Civil War period and compare them directly with the distributions arising from the income tax after 1912. We also have some data from the abortive income tax of 1894. After examining the various blocks of evidence, the conclusion will be made that inequality among upper-income groups did not increase during this period. It is necessary to emphasize that the present investigation is one of income and not of wealth. It might have been possible for the nonhuman wealth distribution among people to remain constant or to increase in inequality while the personal income distribution was decreasing in inequality.

Dual private pension households and the distribution of wealth in the United States

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
NANCY AMMON JIANAKOPLOS ◽  
VICKIE L. BAJTELSMIT
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Private Pension ◽  
Private Pensions ◽  
Net Worth ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact

Using data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances, this paper examines the impact of dual private pension households on the distribution of household wealth in the United States. This paper builds on three lines of previous research: inquiries into ‘assortative mating’, i.e., the tendency for people with similar characteristics to marry; studies emphasizing the importance of pensions as a component of household wealth; and recent research examining how wives' earnings alter the distribution of household income. Evidence of ‘assortative private pensions’, i.e., the tendency for people with private pensions to be married to people with private pensions, is presented. Estimates of the expected value of private pension and social security wealth are added to measures of household non-retirement net worth to obtain the value household wealth. These data indicate that wives' private pensions in dual private pension households contribute marginally to greater equality in the wealth distribution.

Professor Blumin on Age and Inequality

1982 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-384
Author(s):  
Robert E. Gallman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Actual Distribution ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Structure Of Population ◽  
Age Structure Of Population ◽  
The Common ◽  
Comparison Of The Results

In his essay in this issue, Stuart Blumin attempts to sort out the debate between Edward Pessen and me. Professor Blumin begins: “Gallman advances the view that inequality between generations—the association between age and wealth—does explain nearly all of the very striking differences in personal fortune that Pessen and others have discovered.” This is not the view I had intended to advance and is certainly not a view I hold. Many factors bore on the wealth distribution of the United States in the “age of the common man.” The age structure of population surely did not account for “nearly all” of the observed wealth differences. (See, for example, my treatment of this subject— based on manuscript census data for 1860—in Davis et al., 1972: 31-32. This discussion treats the influences on wealth holding of age, sex, nativity, color, occupation, and inheritance.) How Professor Blumin came to misunderstand me so badly I cannot say, but I suspect he was misled by my ill-advised comparison of the results drawn from my model with the actual distribution of wealth in 1860 (Gallman, 1978:198).

scholarly journals Effects of unconventional monetary policy on income and wealth distribution: Evidence from United States and Eurozone

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 535-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan-Francisco Albert ◽  
Nerea Gómez-Fernández ◽  
Carlos Ochando
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Unconventional Monetary Policy ◽  
Vector Autoregressive ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Income And Wealth Distribution

As an answer to the ?Great Recession? and Zero Lower Bound problem, main central banks had to use unconventional monetary policy (UMP). This research focuses on the distributive effects of these measures on household income and household wealth in the United States of America (USA) and the Eurozone. For this purpose, this paper presents four models that were constructed using the Structural Vector Autoregressive methodology (SVAR). The results suggest that the UMPs applied by the Federal Reserve (FED) in the USA could increase wealth and income inequality through the portfolio channel. However, the same results were not observed in the Eurozone.

scholarly journals WEALTH INEQUALITY: DATA AND MODELS

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (S2) ◽  
pp. 285-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Cagetti ◽  
Mariacristina De Nardi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Total Wealth

In the United States wealth is highly concentrated and very unequally distributed: the richest 1% hold one third of the total wealth in the economy. Understanding the determinants of wealth inequality is a challenge for many economic models. We summarize some key facts about the wealth distribution and what economic models have been able to explain so far.

scholarly journals The One Percent across Two Centuries: A Replication of Thomas Piketty's Data on the Concentration of Wealth in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Sutch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Marked Rise ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The One ◽  
Thomas Piketty

This exercise reproduces and assesses the historical time series on the top shares of the wealth distribution for the United States presented by Thomas Piketty inCapital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty's best-selling book has gained as much attention for its extensive presentation of detailed historical statistics on inequality as for its bold and provocative predictions about a continuing rise in inequality in the twenty-first century. Here I examine Piketty's US data for the period 1810 to 2010 for the top 10 percent and the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution. I conclude that Piketty's data for the wealth share of the top 10 percent for the period 1870 to 1970 are unreliable. The values he reported are manufactured from the observations for the top 1 percent inflated by a constant 36 percentage points. Piketty's data for the top 1 percent of the distribution for the nineteenth century (1810–1910) are also unreliable. They are based on a single mid-century observation that provides no guidance about the antebellum trend and only tenuous information about the trend in inequality during the Gilded Age. The values Piketty reported for the twentieth century (1910–2010) are based on more solid ground, but have the disadvantage of muting the marked rise of inequality during the Roaring Twenties and the decline associated with the Great Depression. This article offers an alternative picture of the trend in inequality based on newly available data and a reanalysis of the 1870 Census of Wealth. This article does not question Piketty's integrity.

scholarly journals Optimal Positive Capital Taxes at Interior Steady States

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-150
Author(s):  
Jess Benhabib ◽  
Bálint Szoőke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Steady State ◽  
Upper Bound ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Steady States ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
Neoclassical Model ◽  
Equilibrium Trajectory ◽  
Endogenous Labor

We generalize recent results of Bassetto and Benhabib (2006) and Straub and Werning (2019) in a neoclassical model with endogenous labor-leisure choice where all agents are allowed to save and accumulate capital. We provide a sufficient condition under which optimal redistributive capital taxes remain at their allowed upper bound forever, even if the resulting equilibrium trajectory converges to a unique steady state with positive and finite consumption, capital, and labor. We then provide an interpretation of our sufficient condition. Using recent evidence on wealth distribution in the United States, we argue that our sufficient condition is empirically plausible. (JEL D31, E21, H21, H23, H25, J22)

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