Reevaluating Distributional Consequences of the Transition to Market Economy in Poland: New Results from Combined Household Survey and Tax Return Data

Michał Brzeziński, Michal Myck and Mateusz Najsztub

No 12734, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use Pareto imputation, survey reweighting, and microsimulation methods applied to combined household survey and tax return data to reevaluate distributional consequences of the post-socialist transition in Poland. Our approach results in the first estimates of top-corrected inequality trends for real equivalized disposable incomes over the years 1994-2015. We find that the top-corrected Gini coefficient grew by 14-26% more compared to the unadjusted survey-based estimates. This implies that over the last three decades Poland has become one of the most unequal European countries among those for which top-corrected inequality estimates exist. The highest-income earners benefited the most during the post-socialist transformation: the annual rate of income growth for the top 5% of the population exceeded 3.5%, while the median income grew by about 2.5%.

Keywords: income inequality; Gini index; top income shares; tax record; Pareto distribution; survey data; Poland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C46 D31 D63 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-ore and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - revised version published as 'Sharing the gains of transition: evaluating changes in income inequality and redistribution in Poland using combined survey and tax return data' in: European Journal of Political Economy , 2022, 73, 102121

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Working Paper: Reevaluating distributional consequences of the transition to market economy in Poland: new results from combined household survey and tax return data (2019)
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