Income and Wealth Inequality
Leaders: Nicholas Bloom, Raj Chetty, Emmanuel Saez
The CPI is home to some of the country’s most influential analyses of the income and wealth distribution. The purpose of the Income and Wealth RG is to monitor the ongoing takeoff in income inequality, to better understand its sources, and to analyze its implications for labor market performance, educational attainment, mobility, and more. The following is a sampling of the CPI’s research projects within this area.
Trends in income and wealth inequality: What are the key trends in U.S. income and wealth inequality? The U.S. increasingly looks to Emmanuel Saez and his research team for the latest data on U.S. economic inequality.
Distributional National Accounts: In an ambitious infrastructural project, Emmanuel Saez and his team are building a “Distributional National Accounts” based on tax returns, a data set that will eliminate the current gap between (a) national accounts data based on economic aggregates and (b) inequality analysis that uses micro-level tax data to examine the distribution of income but is not consistent with national aggregates. This new data set will in turn make it possible to evaluate the extent to which economic growth, which has long been represented as a preferred poverty-reduction approach, is indeed delivering on that objective.
The rise of between-firm inequality: How much of the rise in earnings inequality can be attributed to increasing between-firm dispersion in the average wages they pay? This question can be addressed by constructing a matched employer-employee data set for the United States using administrative records.
Rent and inequality: It is increasingly fashionable to argue that “rent” accounts for much of the takeoff in income inequality. The Current Population Survey can be used to assess whether this claim is on the mark.
Featured Examples
Income And Wealth - CPI Research
Title | Author | Media | |
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Income Inequality and Income Segregation | Sean F. Reardon, Kendra Bischoff |
Income Inequality and Income SegregationAuthor: Sean F. Reardon, Kendra BischoffPublisher: Date: 07/2010 Both income inequality and income segregation in the United States grew substantially from 1970 to 2000. Using data from the 100 largest metropolitan areas, we investigate whether and how income inequality affects patterns of income segregation along three dimensions—the spatial concentration of poverty and affluence; race-specific patterns of income segregation; and the geographic scale of income segregation. We find a robust relationship between income inequality and income segregation, an effect that is larger for black families than for white families. In addition, income inequality affects income segregation primarily through its effect on the large-scale spatial concentration of affluence, rather than by affecting the spatial concentration of poverty or by altering small-scale patterns of income segregation. |
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Measuring What Employers Do about Entry Wages over the Business Cycle: A New Approach | Pedro S. Martins, Gary Solon, Jonathan P. Thomas |
Measuring What Employers Do about Entry Wages over the Business Cycle: A New ApproachAuthor: Pedro S. Martins, Gary Solon, Jonathan P. ThomasPublisher: American Economic Association Date: 02/2010 Rigidity in real hiring wages plays a crucial role in some recent macroeconomic models. But are hiring wages really so noncyclical? We propose using employer/employee longitudinal data to track the cyclical variation in the wages paid to workers newly hired into specific entry jobs. Illustrating the methodology with 1982-2008 data from the Portuguese census of employers, we find real entry wages were about 1.8 percent higher when the unemployment rate was 1 percentage point lower. Like most recent evidence on other aspects of wage cyclicality, our results suggest that the cyclical elasticity of wages is similar to that of employment. |
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How Class Works: Objective and Subjective Aspects of Class since the 1970s | Michael Hout |
How Class Works: Objective and Subjective Aspects of Class since the 1970sAuthor: Michael HoutPublisher: Russell Sage Foundation Date: 07/2008 |
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Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? | Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, In Paik |
Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?Author: Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, In PaikPublisher: American Journal of Sociology Date: 03/2007 |
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Four Gloomy Futures for Sex Segregation | David B. Grusky, Asaf Levanon |
Four Gloomy Futures for Sex SegregationAuthor: David B. Grusky, Asaf LevanonPublisher: Westview Press Date: 01/2007 |
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income and wealth - CPI Affiliates
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Moshe Semyonov |
Bernard and Audre Rapoport Chair Professor of the Sociology of Labor, Tel Aviv University; Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago |
University of Illinois at Chicago and Tel Aviv University |
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Henryk Domanski |
Professor, Director, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology |
Polish Academy of Sciences |
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Dennis Gilbert |
Professor of Sociology Emeritus; Lecturer in Sociology |
Hamilton College |
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Ronald L. Breiger |
Professor of Sociology; Professor (by courtesy), School of Government and Public Policy; Affiliate Member, Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Statistics at the University of Arizona |
University of Arizona |
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Nan Dirk De Graaf |
Professor and Official Fellow, Department of Sociology, Nuffield College |
University of Oxford |
Pages
Income And Wealth - Other Research
Title | Author | Media | |
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The Dual Economy | Averitt, Robert T. | ||
The Wealth of Nations | Adam Smith |
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The Wealth of NationsAuthor: Adam SmithPublisher: University of Chicago Press Date: |
Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America | Barbara Ehrenreich |
Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in AmericaAuthor: Barbara EhrenreichPublisher: Macmillan Date: |
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False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness | Stanley Aronowitz |
False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class ConsciousnessAuthor: Stanley AronowitzPublisher: Duke University Press Date: |
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Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic Achievement | Spilerman, Seymour. |
Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic AchievementAuthor: Spilerman, Seymour.Publisher: American Journal of Sociology Date: |
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Income And Wealth - Multimedia
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