TY  - JOUR
AU  - Burkhauser,Richard V.
AU  - Feng,Shuaizhang
AU  - Jenkins,Stephen P.
AU  - Larrimore,Jeff
TI  - Recent Trends in Top Income Shares in the USA: Reconciling Estimates from March CPS and IRS Tax Return Data
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15320
PY  - 2009
Y2  - September 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15320
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15320.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard V. Burkhauser
Cornell University
Department of Policy Analysis & Management
259 MVR Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-4401
Tel: 607/255-2097
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: rvb1@cornell.edu

Shuaizhang Feng
Department of Economics
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Shanghai China
E-Mail: shuaizhang.feng@gmail.com

Stephen Jenkins
University of Essex
Institute for Social and Economic Research
Colchester, ENGLAND CO4 3SQ
E-Mail: stephenj@essex.ac.uk

Jeff Larrimore
Joint Committee on Taxation
1625 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
E-Mail: jeff.larrimore@mail.house.gov
AB  - Although the vast majority of US research on trends in the inequality of family income is based on public-use March Current Population Survey (CPS) data, a new wave of research based on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster growing trends. We show that these apparently inconsistent estimates can largely be reconciled once one uses internal CPS data (which better captures the top of the income distribution than public-use CPS data) and defines the income distribution in the same way. Using internal CPS data for 1967–2006, we closely match the IRS data-based estimates of top income shares reported by Piketty and Saez (2003), with the exception of the share of the top 1 percent of the distribution during 1993–2000. Our results imply that, if inequality has increased substantially since 1993, the increase is confined to income changes for those in the top 1 percent of the distribution.
ER  -