Sectores de altos ingresos en Uruguay: participación relativa y patrones de movilidad en el perí­odo 2009-2012

This paper analyzes the evolution of income inequality and characterizes income mobility in Uruguay during the period 2009-2012, focusing on top income groups. The study exploits novel individual-level panel data based on personal income tax records, which contain information on income, taxes and individual attributes (sex, age) and covers 75% of the Uruguayan population aged 20 and over. The main findings of the paper are the following: (1) pre-tax income inequality decreased during the period of study, even though the fall is milder in tax records than in harmonized household surveys; (2) the top 1% income share remained stable at 14% over the period and top income positions are highly persistent: the annual persistent rate at the top 1% is approximately 80%; (3) womenŽs persistent rates at the top of the income distribution are slightly lower than menŽs; (4) comparisons by income sources show that capital and self-employment income are relatively more mobile than wages, salaries and pensions; (5) the comparison between annual and permanent income-based inequality measures suggests that the equalizing effect of income mobility is modest, at least for the short period considered (1.4 p.p. and 0.5 p.p. reduction in the Gini index and the top 1% income share respectively); (6) finally, personal income taxation in Uruguay redistributes roughly 2 p.p. of the Gini index. This paper contributes to the literature on income mobility in Latin America where, due to the lack of individual-level panel data, previous studies have mainly relied on pseudo panel techniques. The paper also adds to the emerging literature on top income mobility. Despite the short time dimension of the panel precludes the study of the evolution of income mobility in a long time span, it allows to examine how mobility patterns vary by income strata and between different demographic groups and income sources.