Measuring top income shares in the UK

Arun Advani, Andy Summers and Hannah Tarrant
Additional contact information
Andy Summers: London School of Economics ; LSE III ; CAGE; IFS
Hannah Tarrant: LSE III

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Information about the share of total income held by the richest 1%, or other top income groups, is increasingly used to discuss inequality levels and trends within and between nations. A top income share is the ratio of the total income held by the top income group divided by total personal income (the ‘income control total’). We compare two approaches to estimating income control totals: the ‘external’ approach used by the World Inequality Database, and an augmented ‘internal’ approach. We argue in favour of the latter, with reference to five desirable properties that a top share series would ideally possess. The choice matters : our augmented internal approach yields estimates of the UK top 1% share that are around 2 percentage points higher than the ‘external’ approach

Keywords: income inequality; measurement; national accounts; top shares (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... rp_1454_-_advani.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring top income shares in the UK (2022)
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:wrk:warwec:1454

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margaret Nash ().