This report examines how household incomes were changing in the UK up to the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how other measures of household living standards have changed over the course of the pandemic. In particular, we use the latest official data covering years up to 2019-20 to provide a...

Survey under-coverage of top incomes leads to bias in survey-based estimates of overall income inequality. Using income tax record data in combination with survey data is a potential approach to address the problem; we consider here the UK's pioneering "SPI adjustment" method that implements...

Estimates of UK income inequality trends differ substantially according to whether estimates are based on household survey data (used for official statistics) or tax return data (used in the top incomes literature). We reconcile differences in variable definitions and combine survey and tax...

Although the vast majority of US research on trends in the inequality of family income is based on public-use March Current Population Survey (CPS) data, a new wave of research based on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster...

Using kernel density estimation we find that over their 1990s business cycles the entire distribution of after-tax (disposable) income moved to the right in the United States and Great Britain while inequality declined. In contrast, Germany and Japan experienced less growth, a rise in inequality...