This paper presents new homogeneous series on top wealth shares from 1916 to 2000 in the United States using estate tax return data. Top wealth shares were very high at the beginning of the period but have been hit sharply by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II shocks. Those...

This paper summarizes the main findings of the recent studies that have constructed top incomeand wealth shares series over the century for a number of countries using tax statistics. Most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the century due to a...

This paper provides evidence that asset testing of social transfers substantially depresses the liquid wealth of the poor. Our setting is Denmark where the low-income elderly receive an annual payment (around $3,000) if their end-of-year liquid wealth is below a threshold (around $15,000). Using...