Levels and Trends in U.S. Income and its Distribution: A Crosswalk from Market Income towards a Comprehensive Haig‐Simons Income Approach

Philip Armour, Richard Burkhauser and Jeff Larrimore

Southern Economic Journal, 2014, vol. 81, issue 2, 271-293

Abstract: Recent research on U.S. levels and trends in income inequality varies substantially based on how these studies measure income. We crosswalk (move between standards) from a market income of tax units to a more comprehensive measure of income including realized capital gains of households using a unified data set and replicate common findings in the literature. By using a comprehensive income definition in the spirit of Haig‐Simons, considering yearly accrued capital gains rather than focusing on the delayed reporting of capital gains that appear in Internal Revenue Service tax return data, the observed growth in income inequality and top income shares since 1989 is dramatically reduced.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.4284/0038-4038-2013.175

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:soecon:v:81:y:2014:i:2:p:271-293

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Southern Economic Journal from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().