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...

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...

We provide the first survey-based look at levels and trends in income and its distribution from 1959 to 2016 by linking Current Population Survey data from 1967 through 2016 with decennial Census data for 1959. We find that the dramatic decline in the market income of the middle class (measured...

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...

The share of women in the top 1% of the UK's income distribution has been growing over the last two decades (as in several other countries). Our first contribution is to account for this secular change using regressions of the probability of being in the top 1%, fitted separately for men and...

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...

To measure income inequality with right censored (topcoded) data, we propose multiple imputation for censored observations using draws from Generalized Beta of the Second Kind distributions to provide partially synthetic datasets analyzed using complete data methods. Estimation and inference...

Although the majority of research on US income inequality trends is based on public-use March CPS data, a new wave of research using IRS tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster growing trends. We show that these apparently inconsistent estimates are largely...

German and United States data from the Luxembourg Income Study are used to compare the relative economic well-being of Germans and Americans in the 1980s. In our analysis we use both official equivalence scales and consumption-based country-specific equivalence scales developed for Germany and...

Using internal and public use March Current Population Survey data, we analyze trends in US income inequality (19752004). Using a multiple imputation approach where values for censored observations are imputed using draws from a Generalized Beta distribution of the Second Kind, we find that the...