Income and Wealth Inequality

  • Nicholas Bloom
  • Raj Chetty
  • Emmanuel Saez

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. 

Income And Wealth - CPI Research

Title Author Media
Income Inequality and Income Segregation Sean F. Reardon, Kendra Bischoff

Income Inequality and Income Segregation

Author: Sean F. Reardon, Kendra Bischoff
Publisher:
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.

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 Approach

Author: Pedro S. Martins, Gary Solon, Jonathan P. Thomas
Publisher: 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.

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 1970s

Author: Michael Hout
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Date: 07/2008
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 Paik
Publisher: American Journal of Sociology
Date: 03/2007
Four Gloomy Futures for Sex Segregation David B. Grusky, Asaf Levanon

Four Gloomy Futures for Sex Segregation

Author: David B. Grusky, Asaf Levanon
Publisher: Westview Press
Date: 01/2007

income and wealth - CPI Affiliates

Moshe Semyonov's picture 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
Henryk Domanski's picture Henryk Domanski Professor, Director, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology
Polish Academy of Sciences
Dennis Gilbert's picture Dennis Gilbert Professor of Sociology Emeritus; Lecturer in Sociology
Hamilton College
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
Nan Dirk De Graaf's picture 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
The Dual Economy Averitt, Robert T.

The Dual Economy

Author: Averitt, Robert T.
Publisher: New York: Norton
Date:
The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations

Author: Adam Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date:
Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America Barbara Ehrenreich

Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Macmillan
Date:
False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness Stanley Aronowitz

False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness

Author: Stanley Aronowitz
Publisher: Duke University Press
Date:
Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic Achievement Spilerman, Seymour.

Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic Achievement

Author: Spilerman, Seymour.
Publisher: American Journal of Sociology
Date:

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