IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/31486.html

More Unequal We Stand? Inequality Dynamics in the United States 1967–2021

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Heathcote
  • Fabrizio Perri
  • Giovanni L. Violante
  • Lichen Zhang

Abstract

Heathcote et al. (2010) conducted an empirical analysis of several dimensions of inequality in the United States over the years 1967-2006, using publicly-available survey data. This paper expands the analysis, and extends it to 2021. We find that since the early 2000s, the college wage premium has stopped growing, and the race wage gap has stalled. However, the gender wage gap has kept shrinking. Both individual- and household-level income inequality have continued to rise at the top, while the cyclical component of inequality dominates dynamics below the median. Inequality in consumption expenditures has remained remarkably stable over time. Income pooling within the family and redistribution by the government have enormous impacts on the dynamics of household-level inequality, with the role of the family diminishing and that of the government growing over time. In particular, largely due to generous government transfers, the COVID recession has been the first downturn in fifty years in which inequality in disposable income and consumption actually declined.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante & Lichen Zhang, 2023. "More Unequal We Stand? Inequality Dynamics in the United States 1967–2021," NBER Working Papers 31486, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31486
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w31486.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Belloc, Ignacio & Molina, José Alberto & Velilla, Jorge, 2025. "Inheritance Shocks and Expenditure Patterns: A Dynamic Collective Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 18243, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. James (Jim) C. MacGee & Joel Rodrigue, 2024. "The Distributional Origins of the Canada-US GDP and Labour Productivity Gaps," Staff Working Papers 24-49, Bank of Canada.
    3. Jalles, João Tovar & Karras, Georgios, 2024. "Tax progressivity and income inequality in the US," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    4. Bilbiie, F. O. & Galaasen, S. M. & Gurkaynak, R. S. & Maehlum, M. & Molnar, K, 2025. "Hanksson," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2516, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    5. Mark Robinson & Pedro Silos & Diego Vilán, 2025. "Household Debt, the Labor Share, and Earnings Inequality," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-028, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Darapheak Tin & Chung Tran & Nabeeh Zakariyya, 2025. "The Evolution of the Earnings Distribution in a Sustained Growth Economy: Evidence from Australia," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2025-704, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    7. Giovanni L. Violante, 2024. "A Comment on: “Walras–Bowley Lecture: Market Power and Wage Inequality” by Shubhdeep Deb, Jan Eeckhout, Aseem Patel, and Lawrence Warren," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(3), pages 637-641, May.
    8. Ferriere, Axelle & Grübener, Philipp & Sachs, Dominik, 2024. "Optimal Redistribution: Rising Inequality vs. Rising Living Standards," CEPR Discussion Papers 19107, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Fabio Milani, 2025. "Inflation, Monetary Policy, and Capital-Labor Inequality," CESifo Working Paper Series 12065, CESifo.
    10. Felipe Alves & Giovanni L. Violante, 2024. "From Micro to Macro Hysteresis: Long-Run Effects of Monetary Policy," Staff Working Papers 24-39, Bank of Canada.
    11. repec:cam:camjip:2507 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:31486. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.