Motivated by the recent rise of populism in western democracies, we develop a model in which a populist backlash emerges endogenously in a growing economy. In the model, voters dislike inequality, especially the high consumption of "elites." Economic growth exacerbates inequality due to...

It is widely recognised that household surveys do not fully capture the incomes of the very richest individuals and households, particularly those among the so-called "top 1%", for reasons including non-response and under-reporting. As a consequence, estimates based on survey data alone...

We examine how wealth windfalls affect self-employment decisions using data on cash payments from claims on Texas shale drilling to people throughout the United States. Individuals who receive large wealth shocks (greater than $50,000) have 51% higher self-employment rates. The increase in...

In this paper, we attempt to explain differences between the US and UK household wealth distributions, with an emphasis on the quite different porfolios held in stock and housing equities in the two countries. As a proportion of their total wealth, British households hold relatively small...

Despite the enormous gains in the economic well-being of the elderly, and the progressivity of the Social Security benefit schedule, there remains substantial inequality in financial resources. In this paper we use data from the Health and Retirement Survey to examine the distribution of pension...

This paper presents new findings on global inequality dynamics from the World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world), with particular emphasis on the contrast between the trends observed in the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom. We observe rising top income and wealth shares...

This volume, from the 1956 Conference, deals with the nature, reliability, and the uses of the income data included in the 1950 census. It contrasts this data with income information from other sources—field surveys, and administrative records of government regulatory, fiscal, and social...