Lifetime Earnings, Income Or Wealth?
How Alternative Resource Measures Affect the Location And Composition Of the Very Top Of the Distribution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40652Keywords:
lifetime earnings, inequality, distribution of income and wealth, measurementAbstract
In this article, we compare the distributions of income, wealth, and lifetime earnings, using a high-quality household survey with an oversample of high net worth households (the Survey of Consumer Finances) to identify points in the distribution where the very top separates from the rest. We explore the traits of the rich using each of these measures to understand if and how they differ. We then look further along the distribution to identify the social, demographic, and economic measures where the very top of the distribution truly stands apart from the lower-resourced groups and where there is overlap with the rest of the distribution.
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