Dynamics of Income Rank Volatility: Evidence from Germany and the US

Louis Chauvel, Anne Hartung and Flaviana Palmisano

No 926, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: This paper presents a methodology for comparing income rank volatility profiles over time and across distributions. While most of the existing measures are affected by changes in marginal distributions, this paper proposes a framework that is based on individuals’ relative positions in the distribution, and is neutral in relation to structural changes that occur in the economy. Applying this approach to investigate rank volatility in Germany and the US over three decades, we show that while poorer individuals within both countries are the most volatile, the volatility trend for the middle class in each of these countries differs.

Keywords: rank volatility; income; risk; inequality; middle class; Germany; US (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 I30 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 p.
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.564651.de/diw_sp0926.pdf (application/pdf)

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:diw:diwsop:diw_sp926

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().