The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez

No 11955, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper summarizes the main findings of the recent studies that have constructed top income and wealth shares series over the century for a number of countries using tax statistics. Most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the century due to a precipitous drop in large wealth holdings during the wars and depression shocks. Top income shares do not recover in the immediate post war decades. However, over the last 30 years, top income shares have increased substantially in English speaking countries but not at all in continental Europe countries or Japan. This increase is due to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes starting in the 1970s and accelerating in the 1990s. As a result, top wage earners have replaced capital income earners at the top of the income distribution in English speaking countries. We discuss the proposed explanations and the main questions that remain open.

JEL-codes: D3 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (312)

Published as Piketty, Thomas and Emmanuel Saez. “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 96, 2 (May 2006): 200-205.
Published as Manza, Jeff and Michael Sauder. Inequalities and Societies Reader, First Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, February 2009.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11955.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective (2006)
Working Paper: The evolution of top incomes: a historical and international perspectives (2006)
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:nbr:nberwo:11955

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11955

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().