Accounting for Wealth-Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates, and Simulations for France
1
CREST -
Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique
2 ENSAE - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse Economique
3 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne
4 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
5 ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon
6 PSE - Paris School of Economics
7 WIL - World Inequality Lab
8 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales
9 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
2 ENSAE - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse Economique
3 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne
4 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
5 ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon
6 PSE - Paris School of Economics
7 WIL - World Inequality Lab
8 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales
9 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
Bertrand Garbinti
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1119903
Thomas Piketty
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1256308
- ORCID : 0000-0002-1261-2392
- IdRef : 033197563
Résumé
Measuring and understanding the evolution of wealth inequality is a key challenge for researchers, policy makers, and the general public. This paper breaks new ground on this topic by presenting a new method to estimate and study wealth inequality. This method combines fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts in order to provide annual wealth distribution series, with detailed breakdowns by percentiles, age, and assets. Using the case of France as an illustration, we show that the resulting series can be used to better analyze the evolution and the determinants of wealthinequality dynamics over the 1970-2014 period. We show that the decline in wealth inequality ends in the early 1980s, marking the beginning of a rise in the top 1% wealth share, though with significant fluctuations due largely to asset price movements. Rising inequality in savings rates coupled with highly stratified rates of returns has led to rising wealth concentration in spite of the opposing effect of house price increases. We develop a simple simulation model highlighting how changes in the combination of unequal savings rates, rates of return, and labor earnings that occurred in the early 1980s generated large multiplicative effects that led to radically different steady-state levels of wealth inequality. Taking advantage of the joint distribution of income and wealth, we show that top wealth holders are almost exclusively top capital earners, and increasingly fewer are made up of top labor.
Format du dépôt | Fichier |
---|---|
Type de dépôt | Article dans une revue |
Titre |
en
Accounting for Wealth-Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates, and Simulations for France
|
Résumé |
en
Measuring and understanding the evolution of wealth inequality is a key challenge for researchers, policy makers, and the general public. This paper breaks new ground on this topic by presenting a new method to estimate and study wealth inequality. This method combines fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts in order to provide annual wealth distribution series, with detailed breakdowns by percentiles, age, and assets. Using the case of France as an illustration, we show that the resulting series can be used to better analyze the evolution and the determinants of wealthinequality dynamics over the 1970-2014 period. We show that the decline in wealth inequality ends in the early 1980s, marking the beginning of a rise in the top 1% wealth share, though with significant fluctuations due largely to asset price movements. Rising inequality in savings rates coupled with highly stratified rates of returns has led to rising wealth concentration in spite of the opposing effect of house price increases. We develop a simple simulation model highlighting how changes in the combination of unequal savings rates, rates of return, and labor earnings that occurred in the early 1980s generated large multiplicative effects that led to radically different steady-state levels of wealth inequality. Taking advantage of the joint distribution of income and wealth, we show that top wealth holders are almost exclusively top capital earners, and increasingly fewer are made up of top labor.
|
Auteur(s) |
Bertrand Garbinti
1, 2
, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret
3, 4, 5
, Thomas Piketty
6, 7, 8, 9
1
CREST -
Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique
( 2579 )
- 5, Avenue Henry Le Chatelier, 91120 Palaiseau
- France
2
ENSAE -
Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse Economique
( 92774 )
- ENSAE-Sénégal Liberté VI extension - VDN, N° 26 BP 45512- Dakar Fann
- Sénégal
3
GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne -
Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne
( 1169842 )
- 93, chemin des Mouilles 69130 Écully 6, rue Basse des Rives 42023 Saint-Étienne cedex 02
- France
4
CNRS -
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
( 441569 )
- France
5
ENS de Lyon -
École normale supérieure de Lyon
( 6818 )
- 15 parvis René Descartes - BP 7000 - 69342 Lyon Cedex 07
- France
6
PSE -
Paris School of Economics
( 301309 )
- 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
- France
7
WIL -
World Inequality Lab
( 1006727 )
- 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
- France
8
EHESS -
École des hautes études en sciences sociales
( 99539 )
- 54, boulevard Raspail 75006 Paris
- France
9
PJSE -
Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
( 578027 )
- 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
- France
|
Licence |
Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale
|
Public visé |
Scientifique
|
Numéro |
1
|
Langue du document |
Anglais
|
Nom de la revue |
|
Vulgarisation |
Non
|
Comité de lecture |
Oui
|
Audience |
Internationale
|
Date de publication |
2021-02-01
|
Volume |
19
|
Page/Identifiant |
620 - 663
|
Projet(s) ANR |
|
Mots-clés (JEL) |
|
Domaine(s) |
|
DOI | 10.1093/jeea/jvaa025 |
UT key WOS | 000647650200017 |
Origine :
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