Journal Article
Pareto models, top incomes, and recent trends in UK income inequality
Authors
Publication date
Apr 2017
Summary
I determine UK income inequality levels and trends by combining inequality estimates from tax return data (for the ‘rich’) and household survey data (for the ‘non-rich’), taking advantage of the better coverage of top incomes in tax return data (which I demonstrate) and creating income variables in the survey data with the same definitions as in the tax data to enhance comparability. For top income recipients, I estimate inequality and mean income by fitting Pareto models to the tax data, examining specification issues in depth, notably whether to use Pareto I or Pareto II (generalized Pareto) models, and the choice of income threshold above which the Pareto models apply. The preferred specification is a Pareto II model with a threshold set at the 99th or 95th percentile (depending on year). Conclusions about aggregate UK inequality trends since the mid-1990s are robust to the way in which tax data are employed. The Gini coefficient for individual gross income rose by around 7% or 8% between 1996/7 and 2007/8, with most of the increase occurring after 2003/4. The corresponding estimate based wholly on the survey data is around −5%.
Published in
Economica
Volume and page numbers
84 , 261 -289
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12217
ISSN
16
Subjects
Statistical Mathematics, Households, Income Dynamics, Taxation, and Surveys
Links
University of Essex, Albert Sloman Library Periodicals *restricted to University of Essex registered users* - http://serlib0.essex.ac.uk/record=b1597373~S5
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