Replication data for: What Do We Know about the Evolution of Top Wealth Shares in the United States?

Name: Replication data for: What Do We Know about the Evolution of Top Wealth Shares in the United States?
Published: 2015-02-01
License: This work is licensed under an Other license created by the data depositor. Please refer to the LICENSE file, which should be located alongside the project data and documentation.
Keywords: Wealth inequality

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Wojciech Kopczuk

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
DataAvailability			10/21/2021 10:24:AM
LICENSE.txt	text/plain	14.6 KB	10/12/2019 02:00:PM

Project Citation:

Kopczuk, Wojciech. Replication data for: What Do We Know about the Evolution of Top Wealth Shares in the United States? Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2015. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-10-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/E113944V1

Project Description

Summary: I discuss available evidence about the evolution of top wealth shares in the United States over the course of the 20th century. The three main approaches—the Survey of Consumer Finances, estate tax multiplier, and capitalization methods—generate generally consistent findings until mid-1980s but diverge since then, with the capitalization method showing a dramatic increase in wealth concentration and the other two methods showing at best a small increase. I discuss strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. The increase in capitalization estimates since 2000 is driven by a dramatic and puzzling increase in fixed income assets. There is evidence that estate tax estimates may not be sufficiently accounting for mortality improvements over time. The nonresponse and coverage issues in the SCF are a concern. I conclude that the changing nature of top incomes and the increased importance of self-made wealth may explain difficulties in implementing each of the methods and why the results diverge.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Wealth inequality

JEL Classification:
      D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
      D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
      P16 Capitalist Systems: Political Economy

Geographic Coverage: United States

Data Type(s): aggregate data

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V1 [2019-10-12]

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