Capital Income Shares and Income Inequality in 16 EU Member Countries

Eva Schlenker and Kai D. Schmid

No 109, IAW Discussion Papers from Institut für Angewandte Wirtschaftsforschung (IAW)

Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the effect of changes in capital income shares on inequality of gross household income. Using EU-SILC data covering 16 EU countries from 2005 to 2011 we find that the level of capital income shares is positively associated with the concentration of gross household income. Moreover, we show that the transmission of a shift in capital income shares into the personal distribution of income depends on the concentration of capital income in an economy. At the mean of the distribution of capital income a 1 percentage point increase of the capital share is associated with a 0.8 percentage point increase of the Gini coefficient of gross household income. Our findings imply that in many industrialized countries income inequality has by no means evolved independently from the observed structural shift in factor income towards a higher capital income share over the last decades.

Keywords: Factor Income Shares; Income Inequality; EU-SILC; Fixed Effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D33 E25 E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Capital income shares and income inequality in 16 EU member countries (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iaw:iawdip:109

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