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Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998 (series updated to 2000 available)

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Piketty
  • Emmanuel Saez

Abstract

This paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the US using individual tax returns data. Top income and wages shares display a U-shaped pattern over the century. Our series suggest that the 'technical change' view of inequality dynamics cannot fully account for the observed facts. The large shocks that capital owners experienced during the Great Depression and World War II seem to have had a permanent effect: top capital incomes are still lower in the late 1990s than before World War I. A plausible explanation is that steep progressive taxation, by reducing drastically the rate of wealth accumulation at the top of the distribution, has prevented large fortunes to recover fully yet from these shocks. The evidence on wage inequality shows that top wage shares were flat before WWII and dropped precipitously during the war. Top wage shares have started recovering from this shock since the 1960s-1970s and are now higher than before WWII. We emphasize the role of social norms as a potential explanation for the pattern of wage shares. All the tables and figures have been updated to the year 2000, the are available in excel format in the data appendix of the paper.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2001. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998 (series updated to 2000 available)," NBER Working Papers 8467, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8467
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    1. Desigualdad de ingresos: su evolución en 100 años de historia
      by Kiko Llaneras in Politikon on 2012-05-15 11:50:18

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    2. Oliver Grant, 2002. "Does Industrialisation Push up Inequality? New Evidence on the Kuznets Curve from Nineteenth-Century Prussian Tax Statistics," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _048, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Berisha, Edmond, 2017. "Yield spread and the income distribution," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 363-377.
    4. Daron Acemoglu, 2002. "Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 7-72, March.
    5. Robert Shelburne, 2006. "A Utilitarian Welfare Analysis of Trade Liberalization," ECE Discussion Papers Series 2006_4, UNECE.
    6. Ulrike Steins & Moritz Schularick & Moritz Kuhn, 2017. "Wealth and Income Inequality in America, 1949-2013," 2017 Meeting Papers 931, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Fix, Blair, 2018. "The Growth of US Top Income Inequality: A Hierarchical Redistribution Hypothesis," SocArXiv suqnk, Center for Open Science.
    8. Fix, Blair, 2017. "Evidence for a Power Theory of Personal Income Distribution," SocArXiv qgwus, Center for Open Science.
    9. Mark C. Freeman, 2004. "Can Market Incompleteness Resolve Asset Pricing Puzzles?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(7-8), pages 927-949.
    10. Fix, Blair, 2017. "Evidence for a Power Theory of Personal Income Distribution," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2017/03, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    11. Yonatan Berman & Yoash Shapira & Eshel Ben-Jacob, 2015. "Modeling the Origin and Possible Control of the Wealth Inequality Surge," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-21, June.
    12. Grüner, Hans Peter, 2008. "Capital Markets, Information Aggregation and Inequality: Theory and Experimental Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 6750, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Fix, Blair, 2018. "The growth of US top income inequality: A hierarchical redistribution hypothesis," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2018/05, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    14. Oliver Grant, 2002. "Does Industrialisation Push up Inequality? New Evidence on the Kuznets Curve from Nineteenth-Century Prussian Tax Statistics," Economics Series Working Papers 2002-W48, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

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    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

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