In recent years, a branch of the economic literature has analyzed household income movements in longitudinal datasets. Previous research has shown that household income is considerably more volatile in Latin America than in developed economies, though little is known so far about the distributional implications of such income changes. This paper exploits the unique database built in Beccaria et al. (2022) from Latin American household surveys for seven countries in 2002-2015 to analyze the impact of household income movements on income distribution. I combine the analysis from traditional indicators in the literature with a novel methodology that quantifies this precise phenomenon and allows for comparisons and rankings across population groups and countries. My results show that Latin American economies feature less equalizing mobility than developed countries, although variability between countries is considerable. Moreover, the mobility pattern observed benefited essentially all households other than those in the right tail of the income distribution. Finally, I provide more specific results for population groups defined in terms of gender and educational attainment.
Capital and Ideology begins observing that “[e]very human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse.” Economics justifies inequality based on meritocracy-- wealth goes to those who deserve it based on their talent and effort. Piketty contends this ignores obstacles to equality from past and present discrimination. This paper supports Piketty by looking at voting rights and property ownership in the US to understand racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities. From its beginnings, through the proprietarian regime of the early twentieth century, and at present, government policies have favored wealth acquisition by a relatively few. In the mid-20th century, the US achieved what Piketty and others have called ‘the golden age of social democracy,’ as policies helped create the US middle class and reduce inequality. The prosperity of the golden age was eroded by neoliberal policies enacted beginning in the late twentieth century. Support for policies that reduced progressive taxation, access to voting, and property rights was garnered using political rhetoric that scapegoated racial, ethnic and gender minorities. Despite its “meritocratic fairy tale”, from its founding, the US has seen limited equality.
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.
Lifetime earnings are an important indicator of well-being but remain under-studied in the context of racial and ethnic disparities. This article explores lifetime-earning disparities between White, Black, and Hispanic families using a measure of lifetime earnings developed by Jacobs et al. (2020 and 2022) for the Survey of Consumer Finances, alongside a two-stage re-centred function decomposition approach, to study factors that contribute to these disparities. We describe how the components of lifetime earnings such as annual earnings, number of working household members, and years of employment vary by race and ethnicity and find that human capital-related variables account for most of the lifetime earnings differences. Furthermore, we explore the contribution of business ownership and find its explanatory power increases at the top of the lifetime earnings distribution.
This paper adopts a novel copula-based technique to measure multidimensional dependence among facets of cumulative deprivation and provides empirical insights on this phenomenon from a cross-country and time perspective. Cumulative deprivation is a condition of simultaneous relative poverty across multiple dimensions of life. The dimensions taken into account are: disposable income, health status, housing quality, job conditions and educational attainment. Multidimensional dependence is evaluated with the downward diagonal dependence index (DDDI). This index provides a measure of statistical dependence among the considered dimensions specifically for the bottom part of the overall joint distribution. The empirical application focuses on Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Czech republic, Romania and Sweden from 2007 to 2019 using EU-SILC data. In the considered period cumulative deprivation and multidimensional dependence both show a growing trend. The rise in the proportion of people who are deprived in many different dimensions strengthens their statistical association. The growth of multidimensional dependence is concerning and requires reconsidering the actual welfare states and their policies.
The large and persistent gap in household wealth by race in the United States is a well-established empirical fact, although the causal mechanisms behind wealth differentials are still a subject of much debate. Earnings are clearly a key driver of wealth accumulation, and wealth differentials by race are known to be much larger than earnings differentials by race. This article addresses two related questions about the relationship between earnings and wealth. First, does switching from contemporaneous to lifetime earnings have a large impact on estimates of the racial wealth gap? Second, does expanding the wealth measure to include Social Security benefits have any additional impact on estimated wealth gaps, after controlling for lifetime earnings? The answers to these questions vary depending on the measure of racial wealth gaps, with substantial impacts on relative wealth levels but only modest effects on relative wealth rankings.
This is the Introduction to the Special Issue of the Journal of Income Distribution, Number 33, 1-2 (March-June 2026), guested edited by Jeffrey Thompson.
This article shows that labour-market outcomes decline with the age at which an individual attains the education level of a bachelor’s degree (BA). When a BA is obtained before age 24 (i.e., ‘on time’), its premium to the educated individual is more than three times that of a BA attained at or after age 24 (i.e., ‘late’). This difference is not driven by selection: 90 per cent of the association remains after adjusting for pre-college factors. The initial occupations of attained by individuals one year after completing a BA are similar, whether that individual graduates on time or not. By age 35, however, ‘on-time’ graduates are in occupations with higher expected income and education requirements. Our findings are consistent with a job-ladder story, in which ‘late’-BA attainers do not fully capture the earnings premium enjoyed by their counterparts who followed the more traditional schedule. This is either because their pre-BA work experience is a weak substitute for the skills required in BA-level jobs or because the negative signals of ‘late’ attainment counteract any positive effect of pre-BA experience.
Intergenerational mobility is a growing concern among academics and policymakers. However, due to the absence of information on earnings for successive generations, little evidence is available for developing countries. This paper adds to this scarce body of evidence by studying the intergenerational mobility of earnings in Mexico. I rely on the Two-Sample Two-Stage Least Squares approach to estimate the intergenerational elasticity of earnings and the rank-rank coefficient at the national, urban and regional levels, considering the attenuation and life-cycle biases suffered by the estimators, using the ESRU Survey on Social Mobility (2011). The key results show less mobility than previously suggested. On average, 70.9 of the relative difference in fathers' earnings is transmitted to their children. Moreover, a 10 percentile point increase in the father's earnings rank is associated with a 3.15 percentile point increase in the son's earnings rank. At the regional level, strong intergenerational persistence is found in the South; whilst the North presents the highest intergenerational earnings mobility.
This study examines how exposure to regional inequality can be related to fairness beliefs about the poor. The hypothesis is that greater inequality is associated with a greater awareness of social disparities, resulting in a higher consensus on the necessity of helping society’s left behind. Using data from the European Social Survey across multiple regions in 25 countries, our results show a significant positive relationship between regional inequality and support for social care targeting the most disadvantaged. We find some evidence of the effect being particularly concentrated among higher income and more educated individuals. Our main findings remain robustacross multiple specifications. The research contributes to the literature by highlighting how actual inequality may shape normative beliefs about social fairness, moving beyond traditional redistribution preferences.
This paper presents a theory and model of long-run cycles in income inequality. The model explains the historical pattern of income distribution identified by Kuznets (1955) and Piketty (2014). It breaks with conventional marginal product theory which claims functional income distribution is determined by the technological conditions of production. Instead, it emphasizes the role of socio-political forces that shape and drive fluctuations in the scale and strength of popular political organizations, which then impact distribution. That impact includes assessment and attribution of productivity contributions. The model provides a framework for interpreting the historical evolution of income distribution and inequality, and for reflecting on current conditions and possible future developments. The core message is twofold. First, socio-political developments matter for income distribution. Second, if those developments are cyclical, income distribution will also exhibit cyclicality.
In this article, I provide some personal remarks and thoughts on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the publication of Capital in the 21st Century (2014) and the fifth anniversary of the publication of Capital and Ideology (2020). I also reflect on the evolution of my work until A Brief History of Equality (2022) and A History of Political Conflict (2025, with J. Cagé). I also provide perspectives on the ongoing transformation of global inequality dynamics.
This paper studies Marx’s theories of the exploitation of labor and the falling rate of profit alongside Piketty’s identity in the era offinancialization. Marx argues that capitalist systems literally exploit labor to extract surplus value, a claim that fans the flames of the critiques of capitalism and contributes to debates about class struggles. Marx also argues that capital accumulation leads to a falling rate of profit, which in modern times can be countered by financialization, as a result guaranteeing the extraction of surplus value. On the other hand, Piketty’s analysis focuses on wealth inequality, proposing that the rate of return on capital outpaces the rate of economic growth (i.e., r > g ), which worsens societal wealth disparities over time, through inheritance and capital income. By synthesizing Marx’s and Piketty’s perspectives within the context of a modern financialized world, this study contributes to ongoing political economy debates on how financial mechanisms sustain the extraction of surplus value. We examine how financial practices influence Marx’s mechanisms of exploitation of labor and the falling rate of profit while also influencing with Piketty’s observations about capital accumulation and inequality. This connection between Marxian theories and contemporary wealth distribution informs debates and enriches discussions on managing inequality in the 21st century.
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century stands as a landmark in economic literature, deservedly lauded for its engaging narrative on inequality. I argue that one of the important features of this book was the use of a simple result in economic theory as a rhetorical device to explain the history of wealth accumulation and concentration. Piketty reformulates it as the “second fundamental law of capitalism” and explains differences in wealth-income ratios (β) in rich countries using variation in growth rates. I use a larger sample of countries, whose data appeared after the publication of Capital, to show that this law is not generalizable. This result is driven by the fact that despite structural differences in per-capita growth, wealth-income ratios are large in many big economies.
This paper examines Piketty’s idea of ’participatory socialism’ from a Marxist theoretical perspective. By employing Marxian class analysis and the framework of Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA), the author argues that Piketty’s socialism will facilitate capitalism’s transition into a new ’institutional’ form, thus helping to perpetuate exploitation that arises from the differential [surplus] value production. This is because Piketty’s socialism fails to fully abolish class as ’process’ by insisting instead on circulating [private] property and co-determination coupled with other reforms aimed at social justice. To fully realize the revolutionary potential of Piketty’s socialism, the author calls for establishing a ’synergetic democratic society’, which can be achieved by democratizing all aspects of the society, viz. economic, political, and cultural.
This study analyses trends in income inequality in Japan from 1991 to 2021 using microdata from the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions (CSLC), supplemented by the National Survey of Family Income, Consumption and Wealth (NSFICW) and tax records. Key indicators examined include the Gini coefficient, top income shares, and the relative poverty rate. While total income per household has declined, the consistent reduction in household size over the period underscores the importance of analysing equivalent income, which adjusts for household composition. The study finds that despite prolonged economic stagnation since the 1990s, overall income inequality has remained relatively stable, particularly when measured by the Gini coefficient for equivalent disposable income. Equivalent income declined in the 2000s but began to rise again after 2015, possibly reflecting economic recovery measures such as Abenomics. To better capture high-income groups, the study incorporates data from the Sample Survey for Self-Assessment Income Tax (SSSAIT), which reveals a recent increase in the top 1% and 0.1% income shares. The analysis also highlights persistent asset inequality, rising household savings, and Japan’s relatively high poverty rate despite moderate Gini coefficients.
This paper compares Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Bowles and Gintis’ Schooling in Capitalist America, examining their views on the role of education in perpetuating economic inequality. Despite irreconcilable theoretical foundations, both works converge on a critical conclusion: education intensifies rather than mitigates inequality, particularly through intergenerational wealth transmission and hypocritical meritocracy. With regards to intergenerational inequality, we discuss its connection with the change in the voting pattern observed by Piketty in Western social-democratic nations, where left-of-centre parties have become less interested in the most disadvantaged classes over the past several decades. The paper also identifies key limitations shared by the framework of both books, including an inadequate analysis of fiscal austerity and demographic change as drivers of educational inequality. Finally, both works advocate socialist solutions-participatory socialism (for Piketty) and revolutionary change (for Bowles and Gintis)–to dismantle power imbalances that generate inequality.
This paper looks at trends in household wealth from 1983 to 2019. Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2019. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted by 43.9 per cent over years 2007 to 2010, almost double the drop in housing prices. From 2010 to 2016 median wealth rebounded by 17.1 per cent and then by another 21.2 per cent from 2016 to 2019. However, median wealth in 2019 was still down 20.4 per cent from its peak in 2007. The inequality of net worth, as measured by the Gini coefficient, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. It then increased moderately from 2010 to 2016, while the wealth share of the top one per cent shot up by 4.5 percentage points. There was a remission of inequality between 2016 and 2019, with the Gini coefficient and the top percentile share both falling. The paper then “confronts” Piketty’s (2014) now famous “law” that wealth inequality rises if r>g namely, if the rate of return on capital, r , is greater than the rate of real output growth, g - and conversely. In fact, I show that the Piketty condition is not generally met, at least in the case of the U.S. over years 1983 to 2019.
Provisions have been made for the supplementary material to be made available, accompanying the Online First posting of the article text. Also, coloured versions of all the figures have been retained in the supplementary material.
