The Rise of Income and Wealth Inequality in America: Evidence from Distributional Macroeconomic Accounts
利用美国官方宏观经济账户构建的分配性账户，量化了1978至2018年间收入和财富集中度的上升，发现2018年最富有的400人实际税率低于宏观税率，揭示了税收体系的累退性。
This paper studies inequality in America through the lens of distributional macroeconomic accounts—comprehensive distributions of the aggregate amount of income and wealth recorded in the official macroeconomic accounts of the United States. We use these distributional macroeconomic accounts to quantify the rise of income and wealth concentration since the late 1970s, the change in tax progressivity, and the direct redistributive effects of government intervention in the economy. Between 1978 and 2018, the share of pre-tax income earned by the top 1% rose from 10% to about 19%, and the share of wealth owned by the top 0.1% rose from 7% to about 18%. In 2018, the tax system was regressive at the top-end; the top 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower average tax rate than the macroeconomic tax rate of 29%. We confront our methods and findings with those of other studies, pinpoint the areas where more research is needed, and describe how additional data collection could improve inequality measurement.