Using the evidence from the Luxembourg Wealth Study it appears that the distribution of wealth in the UK is considerably less than in Canada, the US or Sweden. But does this result come from an underestimate of inequality among the wealthy and of the wealth differential between the rich and the...

We show how classic source-decomposition and subgroup-decomposition methods can be reconciled with regression methodology used in the recent literature. We also highlight some pitfalls that arise from uncritical use of the regression approach. The LIS database is used to compare the approaches...

We examine the relationship between risk analysis and inequality analysis, using a questionnaire-experimental approach .The experiments focus on the effect of income transformations on the perceived rankings of income distributions in either a risk or inequality context. Both context and income...

The amp;apos'prediction approachamp;apos' proposed by Dearden, Machin and Reed (DMR) consists in (1) regressing the observed incomes of the child and parent families on separate sets of predetermined variables, and (2) regressing the childamp;apos's predicted income on that of the parents....

We examine the sensitivity of estimates and inequality indices to extreme values, in the sense of their robustness properties and of their statistical performance. We establish that these measures are very sensitive to the properties of the income distribution. Estimation and inference can be...

With income distributions it is common to encounter the problem of missing data. When a parametric model is fitted to the data, the problem can be overcome by specifying the marginal distribution of the observed data. With classical methods of estimation such as the maximum likelihood (ML) an...

Inequality comparisons between countries and over time should take into account problems of data imperfection. We examine the contrasting experience of the UK and spain during the 1980s in terms of the distribution of disposable income. We consider whether the apparent divergence of inequality...