We review research on the dynamics and distribution of individual earnings and family income. We start with univariate … earnings models, which dominate the literature and are often used as the exogenous component of family income in structural … family income that integrate individual earnings, marriage (accounting for marital sorting), and earnings of a spouse (if …

Top income inequality in the United States has increased considerably within occupations. This phenomenon has led to a … search for a common explanation. We instead develop a theory where increases in income inequality originating within a few … provides non-divisible services to consumers, with physicians our prime example. Examining local income inequality across U …

The question of whether there is a connection between income and psychological well-being is a long-studied issue … higher levels of income later in life. We focus on earnings approximately one decade after the person's well-being is … happiness. We consider how psychological well-being may influence income. Sobel-Goodman mediation tests reveal direct and …

We estimate household equivalence scales using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We extend … previous studies applying this approach by taking reference income into account. This allows separating needs-based from … reference effects in the determination of income satisfaction. We show that this adjustment helps to overcome a bias causing an …

. In US election survey data, we find that income is more important in affecting voting behavior for more informed voters … strong correlation between income and political information, Congress representatives vote more conservatively, which is also …

Using detailed tax data from the Swiss canton of Bern, I examine how changes in wealth are related to income risk. I … find that only among elderly individuals high kurtosis of income risk may be positively correlated with wealth accumulation …. Additionally, I document that a substantial share of taxpayers have negative net wealth. While wealth and income are positively …

We estimate an income process that is consistent with key facts on individual income risk and its variation over the … business cycle. In particular, the estimated process generates income fluctuations that display (i) flat and acyclical variance … over the life cycle, all consistent with the US data. Furthermore, the income process captures the predictable nature of …

Using detailed micro-data, this paper documents that households with lower income risk (and higher income levels …) exhibit a higher Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC) in response to transitory income shocks, all else being equal. This … designed to account for the empirically observed negative correlation between income levels and income risk. This interaction …