Published ABS data from the Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) show a substantial increase in income inequality between 2001 and 2010. However, almost all of the increase occurred over a period when changes in survey methodology and income concept were occurring. I document these changes,...

Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez (2011) survey an important new literature using income taxbased data to measure the share of income held by top income groups. But changes in tax legislation that expand the tax base to include income sources (e.g. capital gains, dividends, etc.) disproportionately...

Over the past forty years the economic fortunes of Australian households have fallen into two fairly distinct periods. In the “disappointing decades” of the 1970s and 1980s, real wages stagnated, unemployment increased fourfold and male full-time employment as a proportion of the population...

In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to...

This paper presents two 'non-welfarist' approaches and one 'welfarist' approach to decompose changes in inequality and social welfare into three components. We distinguish the contributions of population, tax policy and labour supply behavioural effects. As an illustration, we decompose changes...

Are differences in preferences for redistribution between right and left wing voters amplified because of misperceptions of inequality? To answer this question, we conduct a nationally representative, randomized survey experiment of 2,584 Australians in which respondents either received...

In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to...

In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to...

We examine the consumer price inflation experiences of Australian households across the income distribution using Australian Bureau of Statistics data and prices and methodology from the national consumer price index. Across the period 2011 – 2018, we find that the lowest income households...

This paper introduces a new Lorenz dominance criterion that allows ranking income distributions according to centrist measures à la Seidl and Pfingsten (1997). In doing so, it defines a-Lorenz curves by adapting the generalized Lorenz curves to this case. In addition, it provides an empirical...