Savings from top incomes and accumulation in the United States context: Results from disaggregated national accounts

Rishabh Kumar

No 1524, Working Papers from New School for Social Research, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper proposes that high savings out of top incomes con- tributed to the steady wealth income ratio amongst US households. I explore counter claims regarding capital gains and housing prices and find they had very little influence on the trends and magnitudes of household net worth, relative to income. Using the dynamics of inter-group accumulation rates, I propose an accounting decomposition formula which captures savings rates for any reference group. This methodology is applied to data from national accounts, balance sheets and income distribution statistics in order to compute saving rates for the Top 1% of households in the US income distribution. The estimates support the idea that high savings from top incomes have captured a growing share of wealth between 1980 and 2010.

Keywords: Saving rates; Top incomes; Wealth; National Accounts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 E21 O51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-mac
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:new:wpaper:1524

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