Estimating top income shares without tax return data: Mexico since the 1990s

Raymundo Campos-Vazquez, Emmanuel Chavez and Gerardo Esquivel ()

Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos from El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos

Abstract: This study estimates the income of individuals in the top part of the income distribution in Mexico since 1992. Mexico is the only OECD country that does not publicly report income from fiscal sources. To circumvent this problem we use income information from household surveys but adjust the misrepresentation of top earners using national accounts data. We then estimate incomes of the very rich using interpolations based on a Pareto distribution. Once we correct for the misrepresentation of top earners in the survey, we find that the income share of the top decile has increased in the last two decades. Our findings contradict the conclusion that is usually obtained solely from household survey information. We also find that the income share of top 1 percent earners in Mexico is close to 25 percent, placing Mexico as one of the countries where the rich take the largest share of total income. Moreover, we find that inequality among the rich in Mexico is larger than in most countries where information is available.

Keywords: top income; rich; inequality; Pareto; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 E01 I30 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:emx:ceedoc:2016-04

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