Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/249118 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 928
Publisher: 
Statistics Norway, Research Department, Oslo
Abstract: 
Most evidence on the long-run evolution of income inequality is restricted to top income shares. While this evidence is relevant and important for studying the concentration of economic power, it is incomplete as an informational basis for analysing inequality in the income distribution as a whole. This paper proposes a non-parametric approach for estimating inequality in the overall distribution of income on the basis of tabular data from different sources, some in a highly aggregated form. The proposed approach is applied to Norway, for which rich historical data exist. We find evidence of very high income inequality from the late nineteenth century until the eve of World War II, followed by a rapid equalization until the 1950s. Income inequality remained low during the post-war period but has increased steadily since the 1980s. Estimates of a measure of affluence demonstrate that overall inequality has largely been governed by changes in the top half of the distribution and in in the ratio between the mean incomes of the lower and upper halves of the population.
Subjects: 
distribution of income
long-run inequality
the Gini coefficient
Norway
JEL: 
D31
D63
N33
N34
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.