Tossed and Turned: Wealth Dynamics of U.S. Households 2007-2009

Kennickell, Arthur B.

doi:10.17016/feds.2011.51

Cited by 10 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…56 Based on the difference between the top 1% wealth shares from the internal SCF files (Kennickell, 2009a(Kennickell, , 2011 and the public use file, the high wealth records excluded from the public use SCF are only about 0.2 percentage point of total wealth and hence represent a very small portion of the gap.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As with all surveys, it is a challenge for the SCF to accurately capture wealthy individuals 47 Earlier SCF surveys are available for 1962, 1983, and 1986 but are not directly comparable due to differences in sampling. See Kennickell (2011) for a detailed description.…”

Section: Survey Of Consumer Financesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The unit is the family (single adult person with or without children dependents, or married couple with or without dependents). We also report the top 10% wealth shares estimates from the SCF for the period 1989-2013 from Kennickell (2009b, 2011) and Bricker et al (2014 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 % of total pre-tax income Forbes 400 (top .00025%) and top .01% Wealth Shares…”

Section: % Of Total Household Wealthmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data

2014

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This paper combines income tax returns with Flow of Funds data to estimate the distribution of household wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth: the Survey of Consumer Finance, linked estate and income tax returns, and foundations' tax records. Wealth concentration has followed a U-shaped evolution over the last 100 years: It was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share, from 7% in 1979 to 22% in 2012-a level almost as high as in 1929. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality. Top wealth-holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of total labor income in the economy. We explain how our findings can be reconciled with Survey of Consumer Finances and estate tax data.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Survey Of Consumer Financesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: % Of Total Household Wealthmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data

2014

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“…Using SCF longitudinal data from 2007 to 2009, Kennickell (2011) finds that the largest relative declines in net worth were for people below the 30th percentile of the wealth distribution and most pronounced for those in the bottom 10 percent who were particularly likely to fall into net debt (Kennickell 2012). Bucks and Moore (2012), using the same panel data, find that two thirds of families had wealth losses, and the median loss among losers was around $60,000.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wealth Disparities Before and After the Great Recession

Pfeffer¹,

Danziger²,

Schoeni³

2013

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

212

162

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The collapse of the labor, housing, and stock markets beginning in 2007 created unprecedented challenges for American families. This study examines disparities in wealth holdings leading up to the Great Recession and during the first years of the recovery. All socioeconomic groups experienced declines in wealth following the recession, with higher wealth families experiencing larger absolute declines. In percentage terms, however, the declines were greater for less-advantaged groups as measured by minority status, education, and pre-recession income and wealth, leading to a substantial rise in wealth inequality in just a few years. Despite large changes in wealth, longitudinal analyses demonstrate little change in mobility in the ranking of particular families in the wealth distribution. Between 2007 and 2011, one fourth of American families lost at least 75 percent of their wealth, and more than half of all families lost at least 25 percent of their wealth. Multivariate longitudinal analyses document that these large relative losses were disproportionally concentrated among lower income, less educated, and minority households.

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“…These studies build on numerous previous studies on wealth inequality in the United States and across the rest of the world. Examples specific to the SCF include Kennickell ( and ) and Bucks and Moore (). For a more comprehensive list of references, see Davies () and Roine and Waldenström ().…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in the Distribution of After‐Tax Wealth in the US: Has Income Tax Policy Increased Wealth Inequality?

Looney

Moore

2016

Fiscal Studies

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A substantial share of the wealth of Americans is held in tax‐deferred form such as in retirement accounts or as unrealised capital gains. Most data and statistics on assets and wealth are reported on a pre‐tax basis, but pre‐tax values include an implicit tax liability and may not provide as accurate a measure of the financial position or material well‐being of families. In this paper, we describe the distribution of tax‐deferred assets in the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) from 1989 to 2013, provide new estimates of the income tax liabilities implicit in those assets, and present new statistics on the level and distribution of after‐tax net worth. The results of our analysis suggest that, relative to published statistics on pre‐tax net worth, the distribution of after‐tax wealth is slightly less concentrated in the early years of our sample period, but the effectiveness of the income tax system in reducing wealth inequality has decreased during the last decade. We find the reduction in the long‐term capital gains rate is the primary reason for the muted effectiveness of the current income tax system in reducing wealth inequality.

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Tossed and Turned: Wealth Dynamics of U.S. Households 2007-2009

Cited by 10 publications

References 9 publications

Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data

Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data

Wealth Disparities Before and After the Great Recession

Changes in the Distribution of After‐Tax Wealth in the US: Has Income Tax Policy Increased Wealth Inequality?

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