Real-Time Inequality
This paper constructs monthly distributions of national income for the United States. We develop a methodology to disaggregate annual distributions and project monthly changes in a timely manner by combining high-frequency public data sources. This allows us to estimate growth by social groups as soon as quarterly macroeconomic growth numbers are released, and to track the distributional impacts of government policies during and in the aftermath of recessions in real time. We test and validate our methodology by implementing it retrospectively back to 1976. Estimates are available at https: //realtimeinequality.org.
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Copy CitationThomas Blanchet, Léon Mouillet, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, "Real-Time Inequality," NBER Working Paper 30229 (2022), https://doi.org/10.3386/w30229.Download Citation
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Published Versions
Thomas Blanchet & Léon Mouillet & Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman, 2026. "Real-time inequality," Journal of Public Economics, vol 260.
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