scholarly journals Top Indian wealth shares and inheritances 1966-1985

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rishabh Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Policy Environment ◽  
Estate Tax ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Top Income Shares ◽  
Personal Wealth ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Institutional Transitions

Between 1953 and 1985 India implemented various progressive taxes on personal wealth. I use estate tax returns to compute top wealth shares (top 1%, top 0.1% and top 0.01%) over 1966-1985; a period marked explicitly by a dirigiste policy environment. These new series suggest that wealth concentration in India reduced substantially during the 1970s. Although the decline affected the entire top 1%, the losses faced by the top 0.01% were especially large. Combined with identical trends in top income shares, it appears that the 1950-80 expropriations of India’s rich had similarities to institutional transitions and shocks faced by European elites in the early to mid twentieth century.

scholarly journals Women, Wealth, and Mobility

2009 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Edlund ◽  
Wojciech Kopczuk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Estate Tax ◽  
Top Income Shares ◽  
Inherited Wealth ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Long Term Trends

Using estate tax returns data, we observe that the share of women among the very wealthy in the United States peaked in the late 1960s at nearly one-half and then declined to one-third. We argue that this pattern reflects changes in the importance of dynastic wealth, with the share of women proxying for inherited wealth. If so, wealth mobility decreased until the 1970s and rose thereafter. Such an interpretation is consistent with technological change driving long-term trends in mobility and inequality, as well as the recent divergence between top wealth and top income shares documented elsewhere. (JEL D31, J16, J62, O33)

Are The Rich Getting Richer? Trends in U.S. Wealth Concentration

1976 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Lebergott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Forward Model ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Personal Wealth ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Families

When tested against U.S. evidence back to the nineteenth century a straight-forward model of wealth accumulation contradicts the belief that “the rich are getting richer.” If the wealth owned by the top 1 percent of American families in 1922 had earned only a modest 8 percent yearly until 1953 then they (or their heirs) would have owned 98 percent of personal wealth—instead of an actual share of 28 percent. The erosion of top wealth groups also appears for 1953–1969, and for 1892 and the years following. The reasons for such erosion, inherent in the structure of U.S. families and of U.S. institutions, are discussed.

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.

scholarly journals Heterogeneity in Returns to Wealth and the Measurement of Wealth Inequality

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Fagereng ◽  
Luigi Guiso ◽  
Davide Malacrino ◽  
Luigi Pistaferri
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Long Time Series ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Norwegian Population ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Long Time

Lacking a long time series on the assets of the very wealthy, Saez and Zucman (2015) use US tax records to obtain estimates of wealth holdings by capitalizing asset income from tax returns. They document marked upward trends in wealth concentration. We use data on tax returns and actual wealth holdings from tax records for the whole Norwegian population to test the robustness of the methodology. We document that measures of wealth based on the capitalization approach can lead to misleading conclusions about the level and the dynamics of wealth inequality if returns are heterogeneous and even moderately correlated with wealth.

WEALTH ESTIMATES AS AFFECTED BY AUDIT OF ESTATE TAX RETURNS

1949 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 316-333
Author(s):  
C. LOWELL HARRISS
Keyword(s):  
Estate Tax ◽  
Tax Returns
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