IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/lwswps/45.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Where Income becomes Wealth: How Redistribution Moderates the Association between Income and Wealth

Author

Listed:
  • Manuel Schechtl
  • Nora Waitkus

Abstract

This article studies the role of redistributive policy in comparative research on the determinants of wealth. We argue that public redistribution impacts the level of net wealth by moderating the household-level association of income and wealth. Drawing on microdata for 14 countries from the Luxembourg Wealth Study, and spending and revenue data from the OECD, we employ OLS models with country fixed effects. We find a positive moderation effect of social spending and a negative moderation effect of income taxation. Higher/lower labor incomes translate into higher/lower levels of wealth where income taxation is lower or social spending is higher. We complement our findings with panel information from the U.S, providing further evidence supporting our cross-national results. In summary: public redistribution partially accounts for differences in the association of income and wealth across countries. We urge future research on the correlation of income and wealth to take public redistribution into account.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuel Schechtl & Nora Waitkus, 2024. "Where Income becomes Wealth: How Redistribution Moderates the Association between Income and Wealth," LWS Working papers 45, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
  • Handle: RePEc:lis:lwswps:45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/lwswps/45.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bönke, Timm & Werder, Marten v. & Westermeier, Christian, 2017. "How inheritances shape wealth distributions: An international comparison," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 217-220.
    2. Pirmin Fessler & Martin Schürz, 2018. "Private Wealth Across European Countries: The Role of Income, Inheritance and the Welfare State," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 521-549, October.
    3. Yonatan Berman & Eshel Ben-Jacob & Yoash Shapira, 2016. "The Dynamics of Wealth Inequality and the Effect of Income Distribution," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-19, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schechtl, Manuel & Waitkus, Nora, 2024. "Where income becomes wealth: how redistribution moderates the association between income and wealth," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124574, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Bavaro, Michele & Boscolo, Stefano & Tedeschi, Simone, 2024. "Simulating Long-Run Wealth Distribution and Transmission: The Role of Intergenerational Transfers," INET Oxford Working Papers 2024-01, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    3. Martin Beznoska & Tobias Hentze & Maximilian Stockhausen, 2020. "The inheritance and gift tax in Germany: Reform potentials for tax revenue, efficiency and distribution," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 44(3), pages 385-417.
    4. Nolan, Brian & Palomino, Juan C. & Van Kerm, Philippe & Morelli, Salvatore, 2021. "Intergenerational wealth transfers and wealth inequality in rich countries: What do we learn from Gini decomposition?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    5. Lawless, Martina & Lynch, Donal, 2017. "Gifts and inheritances in Ireland," Papers WP579, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    6. Stefan Jestl, 2021. "Inheritance tax regimes: a comparison," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 45(3), pages 363-385.
    7. Pedro Salas-Rojo & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2022. "Inheritances and wealth inequality: a machine learning approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 27-51, March.
    8. Pedro R. D. Bom & Aitor Goti, 2018. "Public Capital and the Labor Income Share," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-17, October.
    9. Theine, Hendrik, 2019. "The media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation in Germany," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 290, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    10. Bönke, Timm & Werder, Marten v. & Westermeier, Christian, 2017. "How inheritances shape wealth distributions: An international comparison," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 217-220.
    11. Elinder, Mikael & Erixson, Oscar & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 17-30.
    12. Kacper Grejcz & Zbigniew Żółkiewski, 2017. "Household wealth in Poland: the results of a new survey of household finance," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 48(3), pages 295-326.
    13. Anna Boldizsár & Zsuzsa Kékesi & Balázs Kóczián & Balázs Sisak, 2016. "The Wealth Position of Hungarian Households based on HFCS," Financial and Economic Review, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 15(4), pages 115-150.
    14. Spånberg, Erik & Shahnazarian, Hovick, 2019. "The importance of the financial system for the current account in Sweden: A sectoral approach," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 91-103.
    15. Roberto Iacono & Elisa Palagi, 2023. "A micro perspective on r > g," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(358), pages 531-556, April.
    16. Sierminska, Eva & Wroński, Marcin, 2022. "Inequality and Public Pension Entitlements," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1212, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    17. Jaanika Meriküll & Merike Kukk & Tairi Rõõm, 2021. "What explains the gender gap in wealth? Evidence from administrative data," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 501-547, June.
    18. von Werder, Marten, 2018. "Intergenerational transfers: How do they shape the German wealth distribution?," Discussion Papers 2018/15, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    19. Craig A. Depken & Jeff Lureman, 2018. "Wage Disparity, Team Performance, And The 2005 Nhl Collective Bargaining Agreement," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(1), pages 192-199, January.
    20. Holzmann, Robert & Ayuso, Mercedes & Alaminos, Estefanía & Bravo, Jorge Miguel, 2019. "Life Cycle Saving and Dissaving Revisited across Three-Tiered Income Groups: Starting Hypotheses, Refinement through Literature Review, and Ideas for Empirical Testing," IZA Discussion Papers 12655, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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:lis:lwswps:45. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    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.