IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v109y2019p302-06.html

Improving the Measure of the Distribution of Personal Income

Author

Listed:
  • Dennis Fixler
  • Marina Gindelsky
  • David Johnson

Abstract

Developing a national account-based measure of the distribution of income from the commonly used census-based concept of money income has been the subject of earlier research. We use publicly available survey and administrative data to construct a distribution of personal income after enhancing the top income distribution in the Current Population Survey (2007 and 2012). We show that inequality measures are fairly sensitive to the definition of income contemporaneously and across time. This work helps bridge the gap between micro data and macro statistics and informs about results from other studies, such as Piketty et al. (2018).

Suggested Citation

  • Dennis Fixler & Marina Gindelsky & David Johnson, 2019. "Improving the Measure of the Distribution of Personal Income," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 302-306, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:109:y:2019:p:302-06
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20191037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20191037
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20191037.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20191037.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Dennis Fixler & Marina Gindelsky & David Johnson, 2019. "Improving the Measure of the Distribution of Personal Income," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 302-306, May.
    2. Dennis Fixler & Marina Gindelsky & David Johnson, 2020. "Measuring Inequality in the National Accounts," BEA Working Papers 0175, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    3. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2022. "Top-income adjustments and official statistics on income distribution: the case of the UK," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 151-168, March.
    4. Dennis Fixler & Marina Gindelsky & David S. Johnson, 2020. "Distributing Personal Income: Trends over Time," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth, pages 589-603, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Marina Gindelsky, 2022. "Do transfers lower inequality between households? Demographic evidence from Distributional National Accounts," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1233-1257, July.
    6. Mark C. Long, 2022. "Seattle's local minimum wage and earnings inequality," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(2), pages 528-542, April.
    7. Wojciech Kopczuk & Eric Zwick, 2020. "Business Incomes at the Top," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 27-51, Fall.
    8. Süssmuth, Bernd & Wieschemeyer, Matthias, 2022. "Taxation and the distributional impact of inflation: The U.S. post-war experience," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    9. Jagjit S. Chadha & Richard Barwell, 2019. "Renewing our Monetary Vows: Open Letters to the Governor of the Bank of England," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Occasional Papers 58, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    10. David S. Johnson, 2019. "Presidential Address: Measurement Matters: Policy in Federal Statistics and Data," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 297-307, March.
    11. Benjamin Bridgman, 2025. "A Century of Super–Rich Longevity," BEA Papers 0135, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
    • C82 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data; Data Access
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts

    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:aea:apandp:v:109:y:2019:p:302-06. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.