Sweden's distribution of disposable income is very even, with a Gini coefficient of just 0.31. Yet, the wealth distribution is extremely unequal, with a Gini coefficient of 0.79. Moreover, Swedish wealth inequality is to a very large extent driven by the large fraction of households with zero or negative wealth. In this paper, we ask to what extent the resditributive public pension scheme is responsible for these features of the data. To address this question, we study the properties of two overlapping generations economies with uninsurable idiosyncratic risk. The first has a pension system modeled o the actual one, the second has no public pension scheme at all. Our findings support the view that the public pension scheme is to a large extent responsible for the features of the data that we focus on. (Copyright: Elsevier)
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Article provided by Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics in its journal Review of Economic Dynamics.
Volume (Year): 5 (2002) Issue (Month): 3 (July) Pages: 503-534 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML,
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Davies, James B. & Shorrocks, Anthony F., 2000.
"The distribution of wealth,"
Handbook of Income Distribution,
in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 605-675
Elsevier.
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