Income Concentration in Korea, 1976-2010: Evidence from Income Tax Statistics (in Korean)

This paper presents new homogeneous series of top income shares from 1976 to 2010 in Korea using income tax statistics. Total personal income is estimated from national accounts of the Bank of Korea. Top income shares are obtained from income tax statistics and Pareto interpolation. Based on these estimates significant findings include the followings: (1) Income concentration remained low and stable from the 1970s to the 1990s. (2) It increased rapidly for ten years after the financial crisis in 1997. (3) The higher the rank on income ladder to which an income group belongs, the more rapidly it gains income share during those ten years. (4) From international comparative perspectives, the income concentration of Korea was low, which is similar to those of Continental Europe or Japan. However, it has been rapidly approaching to higher level of English speaking countries, and now stands in between the levels of two groups. This paper also compared income tax statistics with household survey data, which shows a strong possibility that existing income distribution indices of the Korea National Statistics Office based on household surveys may significantly underestimate actual income inequality.