Income Concentration in Korea, 1976-2010: Evidence from Income Tax Statistics (in Korean)

Nak Nyeon Kim ()
Additional contact information
Nak Nyeon Kim: Department of Economics, Dongguk University

Economic Analysis (Quarterly), 2012, vol. 18, issue 3, 75-114

Abstract: This paper presents new homogeneous series of top income shares from 1976 to 2010 in Korea using income tax statistics. Total personal income is estimated from national accounts of the Bank of Korea. Top income shares are obtained from income tax statistics and Pareto interpolation. Based on these estimates significant findings include the followings: (1) Income concentration remained low and stable from the 1970s to the 1990s. (2) It increased rapidly for ten years after the financial crisis in 1997. (3) The higher the rank on income ladder to which an income group belongs, the more rapidly it gains income share during those ten years. (4) From international comparative perspectives, the income concentration of Korea was low, which is similar to those of Continental Europe or Japan. However, it has been rapidly approaching to higher level of English speaking countries, and now stands in between the levels of two groups. This paper also compared income tax statistics with household survey data, which shows a strong possibility that existing income distribution indices of the Korea National Statistics Office based on household surveys may significantly underestimate actual income inequality.

Keywords: Income concentration; Inequality; Income tax; Pareto interpolation; Household survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J3 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bok.or.kr/ucms/cmmn/file/fileDown.do?m ... 00001016802&fileSn=1 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bok:journl:v:18:y:2012:i:3:p:75-114

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis (Quarterly) is currently edited by Wook Sohn, Hwan-koo Kang and Jaerang Lee

More articles in Economic Analysis (Quarterly) from Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Economic Research Institute ().