Race, gender and the econophysics of income distribution in the USA

Anwar Shaikh (), Nikolaos Papanikolaou and Noe Wiener

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2014, vol. 415, issue C, 54-60

Abstract: The econophysics “two-class” theory of Yakovenko and his co-authors shows that the distribution of labor incomes is roughly exponential. This paper extends this result to US subgroups categorized by gender and race. It is well known that Males have higher average incomes than Females, and Whites have higher average incomes than African-Americans. It is also evident that social policies can affect these income gaps. Our surprising finding is that nonetheless intra-group distributions of pre-tax labor incomes are remarkably similar and remain close to exponential. This suggests that income inequality can be usefully addressed by taxation policies, and overall income inequality can be modified by also shifting the balance between labor and property incomes.

Keywords: Economics; Econophysics; Income distribution; Classical statistical mechanics; Gender and race (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:415:y:2014:i:c:p:54-60

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2014.07.043

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