Using internal and public use March Current Population Survey data, we analyze trends in US income inequality (19752004). Using a multiple imputation approach where values for censored observations are imputed using draws from a Generalized Beta distribution of the Second Kind, we find that the...

Since 2012 the Congressional Budget Office has included an estimate of the market value of government-provided health insurance coverage in its measures of household income. We follow this practice for both public and private health insurance to capture the impact of greater access to...

Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez (2011) survey an important new literature using income tax-based data to measure the share of income held by top income groups. But changes in tax legislation that expand the tax base to include income sources (e.g. capital gains, dividends, etc.) disproportionately...

Recent research on United States levels and trends in income inequality vary substantially in how they measure income. Piketty and Saez (2003) examine market income of tax units based on IRS tax return data, DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith (2012) and most CPS-based research uses pre-tax,...

There are several ways to measure fatness and obesity, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The primary measure for tracking the prevalence of obesity has historically been body mass index (BMI). This paper compares long-run trends in the prevalence of obesity when obesity is defined...

Using the Census Bureau's internal March Current Population Surveys (CPS) file, we construct and make available variances and cell means for all topcoded income values in the public-use version of these data. We then provide a procedure that allows researchers with access only to the public-use...

Using internal and public use March Current Population Survey (CPS) data, we analyze trends in US income inequality (1975-2004). We find that the upward trend in income inequality prior to 1993 significantly slowed thereafter once we control for top coding in the public use data and censoring in...