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Granular Income Inequality and Mobility using IDDA: Exploring Patterns across Race and Ethnicity

Author

Listed:
  • Illenin Kondo
  • Kevin Rinz
  • Natalie Gubbay
  • Brandon Hawkins
  • Abigail Wozniak
  • John Voorheis

Abstract

Shifting earnings inequality among U.S. workers over the last five decades has been widely stud ied, but understanding how these shifts evolve across smaller groups has been difficult. Publicly available data sources typically only ensure representative data at high levels of aggregation, so they obscure many details of earnings distributions for smaller populations. We define and construct a set of granular statistics describing income distributions, income mobility and con ditional income growth for a large number of subnational groups in the U.S. for a two-decade period (1998-2019). In this paper, we use the resulting data to explore the evolution of income inequality and mobility for detailed groups defined by race and ethnicity. We find that patterns identified from the universe of tax filers and W-2 recipients that we observe differ in important ways from those that one might identify in public sources. The full set of statistics that we construct is available publicly as the Income Distributions and Dynamics in America, or IDDA, data set.

Suggested Citation

  • Illenin Kondo & Kevin Rinz & Natalie Gubbay & Brandon Hawkins & Abigail Wozniak & John Voorheis, 2023. "Granular Income Inequality and Mobility using IDDA: Exploring Patterns across Race and Ethnicity," Working Papers 23-55, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:23-55
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Maggie R. Jones & Adam Bee & Amanda Eng & Kendall Houghton & Nikolas Pharris-Ciurej & Sonya R. Porter & Jonathan Rothbaum & John Voorheis, 2024. "Mobility, Opportunity, and Volatility Statistics (MOVS): Infrastructure Files and Public Use Data," Working Papers 24-23, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. John Voorheis & Jonathan Colmer & Kendall Houghton & Eva Lyubich & Mary Munro & Cameron Scalera & Jennifer Withrow, 2024. "The Privacy-Protected Gridded Environmental Impacts Frame," Working Papers 24-74, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts

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