This paper is concerned with the question of whether top income earners are permanently there or only temporarily receive the highest incomes. How much mobility is there at the top of the income distribution, and how has mobility changed over time? The paper makes both a methodological and an...

Despite a broad consensus on the need to take into account the value of public services and geographical cost of living differences when measuring poverty, there is little reliable evidence on how these factors actually affect poverty estimates. Unlike the standard approach in studies of the...

Despite a broad consensus on the need to take into account the value of public services and geographical cost of living differences when measuring poverty, there is little reliable evidence on how these factors actually affect poverty estimates. Unlike the standard approach in studies of the...

Standard theory of intertemporal choice predicts that people smooth out life-cycle changes in income by borrowing and saving, such that their standard of living in any given year depends more on lifetime income than on that year’s income. Yet, contemporary empirical studies of income...

This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during the 1980's. The results demonstrate that inequality is greater in the United States than in the Scandinavian countries and that the ranking of countries with respect to inequality...

We analyse how inequality of disposable income evolved in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. We find that a standard measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - was surprisingly stable in all...

This paper discusses the degree of intertemporal comparability of national estimates of income inequality when data are based on income tax records. The problem of comparability is particular crucial when major tax reforms have taken place and pre- and post-reform income data are used as basis...

Standard theory of intertemporal choice predicts that people smooth out life-cycle changes in income by borrowing and saving, such that their standard of living in any given year depends more on lifetime income than on that year's income. Yet, contemporary empirical studies of income inequality...

This paper discusses the degree of intertemporal comparability of national estimates of income inequality when data are based on income tax records. The problem of comparability is particular crucial when major tax reforms have taken place and pre- and post-reform income data are used as basis...

We analyse how inequality of disposable income evolved in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. We find that a standard measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - was surprisingly stable in all...