Konvolut The Personal Distribution of Income 2

Steindl, Josef

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Konvolut The Personal Distribution of Income 2

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: 51 Blätter. Konvolut aus handschriftlichen und maschinengeschriebenen Blättern

Year of publication:: 1972

Source material date:: August-September 1972

Language:: German English

Note:: Titel fingiert. Das Konvolut umfasst ein 20 seitiges Typoskript des Artikels "The Personal Distribution of Income" von August/September 1972 mit zahlreichen handschrifltichen Anmerkungen und Anstreichungen; einen Anhang mit Tabellen zur Einkommensverteilung in Schweden, sowie weitere Blätter mit handschriftlichen Texten, Formeln, Tabellen und Diagrammen.

Related work:: Steindl, Josef: The Personal Distribution of Income. In: Steindl, Josef: Economic Papers 1941-88. London: Macmillan, 1990, S. 356-371

Topic:: Stochastic processes and size distribution

JEL Classification:: D31 [Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions]

Shelfmark:: S/M.10.1

Access:: Free access

11 Income and Wealth: Empirical Patterns The following remains refer to the cross-classifications of wealth and income published in Holland and Sweden. These data show certain characteristics which are found a}.so in other cross-section data concerned with size distributions, especially data from official publications like censuses etc. The first feature is that the great bulk of the observations is concentrated in the corner of the first ( the north-east ) quadrant. In other w&rds these distributions are very skew. A great many of the units are small in either dimension. The second feature is that the wealth distribution is heavily truncated ( in Sweden for example at 150.000 crowns) while the income distribution is given down to rather low levels. If the mean income in the various wealth classes is calculated a* linear regression of a very regular,- pattern is obtained. ( This "regression of the first kind" as we—may cali^ it differs from the usual least squares regression in that it does not assume a priori a certain mathematical function for the regression; see Harald Cramir, Mathematical Metheds of Statistics,Princeton 194 if the regression of the means turns out to be linear as is the case here, then it shoitld be the same as the result of a linear ieast squares regression; this may be not quite true only in so far as we fail to use weights for the means corresponding to the various frequencies in the different wealth classes ). The same regression of the first kind in the other dimension - wealth on income - gives a completely different pictures 1 'he mean wealth in the lower income classes does not indrease with income at all; for higher incomes it increases very strongly, so that a strongly curved regression line results. At least one, and probably the most important reason for the curvisdinearity of this regression line lies in the truncation of the wealth data. If we try to fill in the missing wealth data in our imagination, according to plausible and common sense prior knowledge, we find that the regression of wealth on income might well be quite linear and rather steep; at least it would be very much nearer to linearity than it is now. The inclusion of cases with wealth below the tax limit, which is probably the lower and the more frequent the lower the income, would reduce the mean wealth in all income classes but it wiuld reduce it the more the lower the

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