This paper offers an overview of what we have learned from a collective research project on income distribution in the long run. Using historical income tax statistics and a common methodology, we have constructed annual top income shares series (often broken down by income source) for over 20...

Comparing the distribution of top incomes across countries raises many methodological problems, including differences in tax legislation and in tax avoidance, the definition of the income unit, and the definition of a control total for income. The paper considers the significance of these...

A method is developed for using income-tax data to investigate the evolution of the highest incomes over virtually the entire 20th century. The income shares of the top 10, 5, 1, 0.5, 0.1, and 0.05 percent are analysed for the UK and the Netherlands. For considering the top shares among...

This paper presents top income shares series for the United States and Canada over the 20th century. In both countries, top income shares display a U-shaped pattern over the century, with a precipitous drop during World War II, with no recovery in the following decades. Since the late 1970s,...