Wealth distribution in Uruguay: capitalizing incomes in the dark

Mauricio De Rosa ()
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Mauricio De Rosa: Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economí­a

No 18-07, Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) from Instituto de Economía - IECON

Abstract: Wealth inequality is arguably one of the key drivers of overall economic distribution and of major importance in its own right. However, relatively little is known about it, particularly in the developing world. In this article, Uruguay's wealth distribution and composition in 2012 are estimated -for the first time-, based on the capitalization method. Wealth distribution estimations are mainly based on very detailed tax micro-data and own estimations of aggregate national wealth. Results show that at least one third of total wealth is owned by the wealthiest 1% and top 10%Žs share is almost 60%, whilst 35% is owned by the "middle 40". Financial wealth and business property in particular are heavily concentrated among the wealthiest 1%. Sensitivity tests are performed to assess the method's key assumptions, showing that main results are robust. Moreover, estimations are consistent with a novel household wealth survey and with real estate tax data.

Keywords: Wealth distribution; capitalization method; tax records; developing coun- tries; Uruguay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 E01 E22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lam and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/19006

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