Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman
Summary
The authors combine tax, survey, and national accounts data to build distributional national accounts that allocate 100% of U.S. national income to individuals from 1913 onward. This lets them measure income growth consistently with macroeconomic aggregates across the entire distribution, both before and after taxes and transfers. They document a sharp rise in top income shares and stagnation at the bottom since 1980.
Key findings
- Average pre-tax national income per adult grew about 60% since 1980 but stagnated for the bottom 50% at roughly $16,000 per year.
- The income share of the top 1% rose substantially while the bottom 50% share fell over the same period.
- Government taxes and transfers offset only part of the rise in pre-tax inequality, especially for working-age adults.
Subjects & keywords
Cite this paper
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, & Gabriel Zucman (2018). Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx043
@article{piketty2018distributional,
author = {Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman},
title = {Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States},
journal = {The Quarterly Journal of Economics},
year = {2018},
doi = {10.1093/qje/qjx043},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx043}
}