This paper analyzes the microeconomic sources of wage inequality in the United States from 1967-2012. Decomposing inequality into factors categorized by degree of personal responsibility, we find that education is able to explain more than twice as much of inequality today as 45 years ago....

From 2010 to 2019, personal earnings inequality declined in the United States (U.S.) for the first time in decades, yet household income inequality continued to increase. Discordance between trends in personal earnings inequality and household income inequality was greater than in any other...

This paper is part of the Global Repository of Income Dynamics (GRID) project cross‐country comparison of earnings inequality, volatility, and mobility. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer‐Household Dynamics (LEHD) infrastructure files, we produce a uniform set of...

The evolution of Gini coefficient for personal incomes in the USA between 1947 and 2005 is analyzed and modeled. There are several versions of personal income distribution (PID) provided by the US Census Bureau (US CB) for this period with various levels of resolution. Effectively, these PIDs...

We provide an analytical framework within which changes in income inequality over time are related to the pattern of income growth across the income range, and the reshuffling of individuals in the income pecking order. We use it to explain how it was possible both for "the poor" to have fared...

There is a vast literature on the selection of an appropriate index of income inequality and on what desirable properties such a measure (or index) should contain. The Gini index is, of course, the most popular. There is a concurrent literature on the use of hypothetical statistical...

This study validates the microeconomic model defining the evolution of personal incomes in the U.S. Because of a large portion of population not reporting any income, any comprehensive modeling of the overall personal income distribution (PID) is complicated. Age-dependent PIDs allow overcoming...

This article analyzes the determinants of market income distribution and governmental redistribution. The dependent variables are LIS data on market income inequality (measured by the Gini index) for households with a head aged 25 to 59 and the percent reduction in the Gini index by taxes and...