IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-728741.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends

Author

Listed:
  • Gerald Auten
  • David Splinter

Abstract

Concerns about income inequality emphasize the importance of accurate income measures. Estimates of top income shares based only on individual tax returns are biased by tax-base changes, social changes, and missing income sources. This paper addresses these shortcomings and presents new estimates of the distribution of national income since 1960. Our analysis of pretax income shows that top income shares are lower and have increased less since 1980 than other studies using tax data. In addition, increasing government transfers and tax progressivity have resulted in rising real incomes for all income groups and little change in aftertax top income shares.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerald Auten & David Splinter, 2024. "Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(7), pages 2179-2227.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/728741
    DOI: 10.1086/728741
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/728741
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/728741
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/728741?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lukas Riedel & Holger Stichnoth, 2024. "Government consumption in the DINA framework: allocation methods and consequences for post-tax income inequality," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(3), pages 736-779, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/728741. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.