Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth

Revised versions of papers presented at the Conference on Research in income and Wealth titled "Measuring and understanding the distribution and intra/inter-generational mubility of income and wealth", held in Bethesda, Maryland, on March 5-6, 2020.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: In search of the roots of American inequality exceptionalism : an analysis based on Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data / Rising between-firm inequality and declining labor market fluidity : evidence of a changing job ladder. United States earnings dynamics : inequality, mobility, and volatility. Evidence from unique Swiss tax data on the composition and joint distribution of income and wealth. The wealth of generations, with special attention to the Millennials. . Wealth transfers and net wealth at death : evidence from the Italian inheritance tax records, 1995-2016. On the distribution of estates and the distribution fo wealth : evidence from the dead. Structuring the analysis of wealth inequality using the functions of wealth : a class-based approach. Social security wealth, inequality, and life-cycle saving. Parental education and the rising transmission of income between generations. Inequality of opportunity for income in Denmark and the United States : a comparison based on administrative data. Presence and persistence of poverty in US tax data. Intergenerational home ownership in France over the twentieth century. Inequality and mobility over the past half-century using income, consumption, and wealth. The accuracy of tax imputations : estimating tax liabilities and credits using linked survey and administrative data. Geographic inequality in social provision : variation across the US states. Inequality and the safety net in American cities through the income distribution, 1929-1940. The EITC and linking data for examining multigenerational effects. Distributing personal income : trends over time. Developing indicators of inequality and poverty consistent with national accounts. Distributional national accounts : a macro-micro approach to inequality in Germany. The distributional financial accounts of the United States. Using tax data to better capture top incomes in official UK income inequality statistics.

"A collection of twenty-three studies that explore the latest developments in the analysis of income and wealth distribution and mobility. Economic research is increasingly focused on inequality in the distribution of personal resources and outcomes. One aspect of inequality is mobility: are individuals locked into their respective places in this distribution? To what extent do circumstances change, either over the lifecycle or across generations? Research not only measures inequality and mobility, but also analyzes the historical, economic, and social determinants of these outcomes and the effect of public policies. This volume explores the latest developments in the analysis of income and wealth distribution and mobility. The collection of twenty-three studies is divided into five sections. The first examines observed patterns of income inequality and shifts in the distribution of earnings and in other factors that contribute to it. The next examines wealth inequality, including a substantial discussion of the difficulties of defining and measuring wealth. The third section presents new evidence on the intergenerational transmission of inequality and the mechanisms that underlie it. The next section considers the impact of various policy interventions that are directed at reducing inequality. The final section addresses the challenges of combining household-level data, potentially from multiple sources such as surveys and administrative records, and aggregate data to study inequality, and explores ways to make survey data more comparable with national income accounts data. "-- Provided by publisher.