 Evaluating the Distributive Incidence of Growth Using Cross‐sections and PanelsYonatan Berman and François Bourguignon Review of Income and Wealth, 2024, vol. 70, issue 4, 1252-1275 Abstract: We study decennial anonymous and non‐anonymous growth incidence curves in the United States during the past 50 years. The former show income growth by quantile independent of initial incomes and are typically upward sloping, reflecting increasing inequality. The latter are conditional on initial ranks and are flat or downward sloping. This suggests distributional neutrality of growth when accounting for initial income positions. We explain this difference by decomposing the non‐anonymous curves into mobility and shape components. The former is always downward sloping, whereas the latter is upward sloping in periods of increasing inequality. Thus, flat non‐anonymous curves can be observed even with increasing inequality. We exploit the decomposition to show that the slope of non‐anonymous curves in the United States is determined by the evolution of cross‐sectional income distributions. This enables inferring the shape of non‐anonymous curves from cross‐sectional data and test them for a generalized pro‐poorness social welfare criterion. Date: 2024 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:revinw:v:70:y:2024:i:4:p:1252-1275 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC. |
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