Top Income Inequality in the 21st Century: Some Cautionary Notes

Fatih Guvenen and Greg Kaplan

Quarterly Review, 2017, issue October, 2-15

Abstract: We revisit recent empirical evidence about the rise in top income inequality in the United States, drawing attention to key issues that we believe are critical for an informed discussion about changing inequality since 1980: the definition of income (labor versus total), the unit of analysis (individual versus tax unit), the importance of partnership and S-corporation income, income shifting between the corporate and personal sectors in response to tax incentives, the definition of the top of the distribution, and trends in the middle and bottom of the distribution. Our goal is to inform researchers, policymakers, and journalists who are interested in top income inequality.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial income; Top 1 percent; Income inequality; Top income shares; pass-through entities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E25 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Working Paper: Top Income Inequality in the 21st Century: Some Cautionary Notes (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedmqr:00003

DOI: 10.21034/qr.3811

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