Twenty-five years of income inequality in Britain: the role of wages,household earnings and redistribution

We study earnings and income inequality in Britain over the 25 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the middle 90 per cent of the income distribution, within which the gap between top and bottom in 2019–20 was essentially the same, after taxes and transfers, as a quarter-century earlier. This has led to a narrative of ‘stable inequality’, which we argue misses important nuances and key lessons from the UK's experience. In particular, there have been periods in which household earnings inequalities were changing considerably but tax and transfer policy was offsetting its effects on income inequality – in different directions at different times, reflecting sharp changes of policy approach. Means-tested transfers played a crucial role in containing inequality during the ‘inclusive growth’ period of the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the Great Recession. During the 2010s, the minimum wage emerged as the government's primary policy tool for boosting incomes, but this happened almost simultaneously with cutbacks to means-tested transfers, meaning that household earnings inequalities fell considerably and yet net income inequality rose.     

Survey Under‐Coverage of Top Incomes and Estimation of Inequality: What is the Role of the UK's SPI Adjustment?

Survey under‐coverage of top incomes leads to bias in survey‐based estimates of overall income inequality. Using income tax record data in combination with survey data is a potential approach to address the problem; we consider here the UK's pioneering ‘SPI adjustment’ method that implements this idea. Since 1992, the principal income distribution series (reported annually in Households Below Average Income) has been based on household survey data in which the incomes of a small number of ‘very rich’ individuals are adjusted using information from ‘very rich’ individuals in personal income tax return data. We explain what the procedure involves, reveal the extent to which it addresses survey under‐coverage of top incomes and show how it affects estimates of overall income inequality. More generally, we assess whether the SPI adjustment is fit for purpose and consider whether variants of it could be employed by other countries.     

Modelling the Distributional Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis*

The COVID-19 emergency has had a dramatic impact on market incomes and income-support policies. The lack of timely available data constrains the estimation of the scale and direction of recent changes in the income distribution, which in turn constrains policymakers seeking to monitor such developments. We overcome the lack of data by proposing a dynamic calibrated microsimulation approach to generate counterfactual income distributions as a function of more timely external data than are available in dated income surveys. We combine nowcasting methods using publicly available data and a household income generation model to perform the first calibrated simulation based upon actual data, aiming to assess the distributional implications of the COVID-19 crisis in Ireland. Overall, we find that the crisis had an equalizing real-time effect for both gross and disposable incomes, notwithstanding the significant hardship experienced by many households.     

Removing Homeownership Bias in Taxation: The Distributional Effects of Including Net Imputed Rent in Taxable Income

The income tax systems of most countries entail a favourable treatment of homeownership, compared to rental‐occupied housing. Such ‘homeownership bias’ and its consequences for a wide range of economic outcomes have long been recognised in the economic literature. Although a removal of the homeownership bias is generally advocated on efficiency grounds, its distributional implications are often neglected, especially in a cross‐country perspective. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by investigating the first‐order effects, in terms of distribution of income and work incentives, of removing the income tax provisions favouring homeownership. We consider six European countries – Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK – that exhibit important variation in terms of income tax treatment of homeowners. Using the multi‐country tax benefit model EUROMOD, we analyse the distributional consequences of including net imputed rent in the taxable income definition that applies in each country, together with the removal of existing special tax treatments of incomes or expenses related to the main residence; thus, we provide a measure of the homeownership bias. We implement three tax policy scenarios. In the first, imputed rent is included in the taxable income of homeowners, while at the same time existing mortgage interest tax relief schemes and taxation of cadastral incomes are abolished. In the two further revenue‐neutral scenarios, the additional tax revenue raised through the taxation of imputed rent is redistributed to taxpayers, through either a tax rate reduction or a tax exemption increase. The results show how including net imputed rent in the tax base might affect inequality in each of the countries considered. Housing taxation appears to be a promising avenue for raising additional revenues, or lightening taxation of labour, with no inequality‐increasing side effects.     

Understanding Society: minimising selection biases in data collection using mobile apps

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study has a programme of research and development that underpins innovations in data collection methods. One of our current focuses is on using mobile applications to collect additional data that supplement data collected in annual interviews. To date, we have used mobile apps to collect data on consumer expenditure, well-being, anthropometrics and cognition. In this paper, we review the potential barriers to data collection using mobile apps and experimental evidence collected with the Understanding Society Innovation Panel, on what can be done to reduce these barriers.     

Can Housing Wealth Alleviate Poverty among Britain's Older Population?

This paper investigates the scope for housing wealth to alleviate poverty among Britain's older population by modelling the potential effect of equity-release schemes on the net incomes of older homeowners using data from the 1993–94 and 1994–95 Family Expenditure Surveys. We find that for the older population in general, the potential impact of equity release on poverty is limited by the positive association between homeownership and income in later life. The scope for equity release to enhance incomes is restricted mainly to the oldest age-groups where life expectancy is short. However, it is at these oldest ages that incomes are lowest and although we estimate that equity release cannot provide much benefit to those in the greatest poverty, the additions to income that equity release could bring to some of the oldest homeowners are not insignificant. JEL classification: D31, H55, 132, J14.     

Childcare Assistance: Are Subsidies or Tax Credits Better?

We evaluate price subsidies and tax credits for childcare. We focus on partnered women's labour supply, household income and welfare, demand for childcare and government expenditure. Using Australian data, we estimate a joint, discrete structural model of labour supply and childcare demand. We introduce two methodological innovations – a more flexible quantity constraint that total formal and informal childcare hours are at least as large as the mother's labour supply and the explicit inclusion of maternal childcare in the utility function as a proxy for child development. We find that tax credits are more effective than subsidies in terms of increasing average hours worked and household income. However, tax credits disproportionately benefit wealthier and more educated women. Price subsidies, while less efficient, have positive redistributional effects.     

Understanding Society: health,biomarker and genetic data

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study includes a wide range of health measures, and in particular biomarker and genetic data. This makes it a unique resource for research on the economics of health. We review the main features of the biomarker data, how they are collected, and evidence on data quality. We also discuss examples of how these data have been used in economic research to date.     

A symposium on Understanding Society,the UK Household Longitudinal Study: introduction

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study began in 2009, and built on and incorporated its predecessor the British Household Panel Survey. It is the largest survey of its kind in the world and provides rich opportunities for economic research and policy analysis. In this introduction to a symposium on Understanding Society, we review the main features of the study, how it is conducted, and evidence on data quality. We also discuss past and potential uses in economic research.     

Who Receives Medicaid in Old Age? Rules and Reality

Medicaid is a government programme that also provides health insurance to the elderly who have few assets and either low income or catastrophic health care expenses. We ask how the Medicaid rules map into the reality of Medicaid recipiency, and we ask what other observable characteristics are important to determine who ends up on Medicaid. The data show that both singles and couples with high retirement income can end up on Medicaid at very advanced ages. We find that, conditioning on a large number of observable characteristics, including those that directly relate to Medicaid eligibility criteria, single women are more likely to end up on Medicaid – so are non‐white people, but, surprisingly, their higher recipiency is concentrated in the higher income percentiles. We also find that people with low incomes who have a high‐school diploma or higher degree are much less likely to end up receiving Medicaid than their less‐educated counterparts. All of these effects are large and depend on retirement income in a very non‐linear way.     

Why Do the Swiss Rent?

At less than 34%, Switzerland has the lowest home ownership rate in Western Europe. This may seem odd given the economic strength of the country. We use household survey data for five Swiss cantons to explore some possible reasons for this. We estimate a tenure choice equation that allows us to analyze the impacts of a number of key variables on the ownership rate. We pay particular attention to the relative cost of owning and renting, which is a function of house prices, rents, and the user cost of owning. The latter is a function of income tax policy and expected house price inflation, among other things. We also measure mortgage underwriting criteria and consider rent control and other policies affecting rental housing. By simulating a number of hypothetical changes to taxation and other policies, underwriting criteria, and price levels, we assess the importance of these variables in explaining the ownership rate. We conclude that high house prices—relative to household incomes and wealth—and the tax on imputed rent are the most important causes of Switzerland’s low ownership rate.     

Renting versus Owning and the Role of Human Capital: Evidence from Germany

In a world with complete markets, the decision whether to rent or buy a home is not influenced by risks related to human capital. If markets are incomplete and have frictions, however, this may change. Renting should become more likely the more mobile a household has to be and the more income risk can be diversified. Using household panel data from Germany, we test both predictions. We find that mobility requirements have a positive effect on the probability of renting. This effect is robust even after controlling for state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity and other factors known to influence the tenure mode choice. Our data, however, does not support the hypothesis that the potential to diversify net income risk when renting affects the tenure mode choice.     

Residual Income: A Review Essay

Over the past decade, residual income has attracted considerable attention in the academic and professional literature. During this time, many leading businesses have adopted proprietary variants of residual income as a measure of their corporate success. This essay analyses the utility of residual income as a performance measure. We focus on two themes: (i) the relationship between the stream of ex-ante residual incomes and the net present value of a project; and (ii) the association between reported ex-post residual income and change in shareholder wealth. We conclude that residual income lacks theoretical support as a measure of wealth created. We suggest possible reasons for executives adopting residual income and why it has the potential to result in increased organisational performance.     

Is There a Better Way to Examine Income Inequality?

Dividing U.S. tax returns into half‐millionaires (those reporting adjusted gross income (AGI) of $500,000 or more in a given year) and their complement allows greater use of IRS data on income sources than is possible with an analysis that examines a fixed percentage of returns, such as the top one percent. Contrary to popular perception and media rhetoric, the inflation‐adjusted difference between the reported AGI of half‐millionaires and the rest actually declined by 25 percent from 1993 to 2011. The income gap between half‐millionaires and other filers reflects differences in kinds of income, with half‐millionaires deriving a much larger fraction of their income from capital investments whose varying returns make that component of income—and thus the income of half‐millionaires—more volatile. The percentage of total tax returns filed by half‐millionaires in a given year and the percentage of their income derived from taxable gains reported on Schedule D account for virtually all of the variation in the half‐millionaire percentage of aggregate AGI. As this finding suggests, the expanding income share for half‐millionaires does not signify that some collection of privileged rich have become richer. The significant net growth in the percentage of filers who are half‐millionaires has been uneven because a significant proportion of their income derives from volatile Schedule D gains, which are higher during economic expansions and lower during recessions. The incomes of half‐millionaires—and especially millionaires—are anything but recession proof. But even with that volatile component of income included, when their percentage of returns doubles, their percentage of income less than doubles, consistent with declining income inequality.     

Using Understanding Society to study intergenerational wealth mobility in the UK

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study enables researchers to track individuals as they grow up and form new households, making it invaluable for studying the intergenerational persistence of outcomes including income, health and wealth. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Understanding Society relative to other datasets, and document patterns of attrition as individuals transition from childhood to adulthood. We then use Understanding Society to document the intergenerational persistence of wealth in the UK. We find that the intergenerational persistence of wealth is greater than for earnings, and that only around half of the intergenerational persistence of wealth can be explained by the intergenerational persistence in earnings and education.     

吉林省农村居民收入结构对支出行为的影响——基于吉林省2003～2006年抽样调查的面板分析

基于2003～2006年吉林省农村居民消费的面板数据分析发现:基本收入对农村居民消费需求的拉动作用不明显,而非基本收入对农村居民的消费需求具有较强的拉动作用;非基本收入对家庭经营支出的边际贡献较大,但基本收入的边际贡献较低;各类收入对生活消费支出均有显著的边际贡献,且非基本收入的边际贡献较大;财产性收入是税费支出的主要来源,财产性收入和转移性收入与其对应的支出项目保持了较高的相关性.因此,通过一定的政策调整改变农村居民的收入结构,能引导农村居民消费支出结构的改变,进而扩大农村居民的消费需求.     

Information content and the contractual nature of hedging derivative incomes

In a sample of 87 banks representing 631 bank-years for the period 1996–2003, we examine whether information content of hedging derivative incomes is predicated on the contractual nature of the derivative. Of particular interest are the different abnormal trading volume reactions to incomes arising from executory contracts (i.e., cash flow and net investment hedges) and incomes arising from nonexecutory contracts (i.e., fair value hedges). We find a positive and significant relationship between two alternative measures of abnormal trading volume and incomes arising from cash flow and net investment hedges. The results are robust in an equity valuation framework. Our findings suggest that derivative incomes are informative, notably those incomes that are related to executory contracts. An implication for standard setters is that the complex rules for disaggregating incomes on hedging derivatives provide valuable information to the market.     

The Dynamics of Incomes and Occupational Pensions after Retirement

This paper uses two waves of the UK Retirement Survey to look at how incomes change during retirement. We concentrate on men aged 65–69 and women aged 60–69 in 1988–89 and look at how their incomes change over the following five years. Overall, we find a considerable degree of stability in real incomes. We use the panel data to look at the incomes of widows before and after they are widowed and find that, for this group of relatively young widows, their low incomes are in large part determined by the fact that it tends to be the relatively poorer husbands who die among this age-group. Finally, we consider the most important component of private income — occupational pensions — separately. We find a strong relationship between pension level and the probability of indexation — pensions that start low are less likely than higher pensions to keep up with inflation. JEL classification: D31, H55     

The Distributional Implications of Income Under‐Reporting in Hungary*

The ability and inclination of specific social groups to evade tax vary widely, and this leads to considerable variation in the actual tax burden on individuals with similar levels of income. Thus, ignoring tax evasion can be seriously misleading in terms of the distributive and fiscal effects of the tax system. This paper estimates the distributional implications of income tax evasion in Hungary, based on a random sample of the administrative tax records of nearly 230,000 individuals. Gross incomes declared in the administrative tax returns are compared with incomes stated in a nationally representative household budget survey. Our estimates show that the average rate of underreporting is 9–13 per cent, though this conceals a big difference between the self‐employed (who hide the greater part of their income) and employees. The estimates are likely to be lower bounds. These rates are used in a tax– benefit microsimulation model to calculate the fiscal and distributional implications of under‐reporting. Tax evasion reduces households' personal income tax payments by about 16–20 per cent. While the poverty rate increases only slightly, income inequality rises significantly, suggesting that high‐income households tend to evade tax proportionately more. Finally, we find that tax evasion largely reduces the progressivity of the tax system.     

Women,Men and the Redistribution of Income

This paper explores the implications of examining the effect of policy changes on individual incomes rather than household incomes. Conceptual problems arise from the treatment of collective resources and responsibilities, particularly children. These are dealt with in a manner that is transparent with the aim of establishing a practical method of analysing policy at the individual (and gender-specific) level. Two policy-related issues are examined in this framework: the impact of a minimum wage and the effect of introducing a minimum pension guarantee. In each case, the implications of choosing the individual as the income unit are examined and analysis of the issue by gender is presented. JEL classification: C81, D31, H55, J16.