The Impact of Income Components on the Distribution of Family Incomes
讨论如何将收入不平等归因于不同收入来源，指出多种分解规则会导致结果差异，并用美国家庭收入数据展示不同规则下贡献度可能荒谬，提醒研究者谨慎使用分解公式。
Attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income. This paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules. U. S. data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules. A wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained, even when restricted to only “naturally†derived decomposition rules. Some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties.