 Top incomes in the UK over the 20th centuryJournal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 2005, vol. 168, issue 2, 325-343 Abstract: Summary. Recent changes in the distribution of income need to be placed in historical context. The paper provides new evidence about the evolution of top incomes in the UK over the 20th century. Making use of published tabulations of the income tax statistics, and of microdata for recent years, we construct estimates of the shares of top income groups, giving for the first time an annual time series for gross incomes that spans more than 90 years. The paper pays particular attention to the problems of data construction and of the interpretation of tax‐based evidence. The resulting statistics have evident limitations but throw light on periods, such as that between the First and Second World Wars, for which there is little other empirical material. The results bring out clearly how the major equalization of the first three‐quarters of the century in the UK has been reversed, taking the shares of the top income groups back to levels of inequality found 50 years ago. A similar U‐shaped pattern is found for the USA, but the post‐war experience of France is different from that in the UK. Date: 2005 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:168:y:2005:i:2:p:325-343 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A is currently edited by A. Chevalier and L. Sharples More articles in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A from Royal Statistical Society Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.