Top earners: Cross-country facts

Arbeitspapier

We provide a common set of life-cycle earnings statistics using administrative data from the United States, Canada, Denmark and Sweden. Three qualitative patterns are common across countries: (1) the earnings distribution above the median fans out with age, (2) the extreme right tail of the earnings distribution becomes thicker with age, and (3) the growth rate of earnings over the working lifetime is larger for groups with higher lifetime earnings. Models of top earners should account for these qualitative patterns and, importantly, for how they quantitatively differ across countries.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2017:9

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Taxation and Subsidies: Efficiency; Optimal Taxation ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
• Subject: Earnings ; inequality ; top earners ; top incomes

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Badel, Alejandro ; Daly, Moira ; Huggett, Mark ; Nybom, Martin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)
• (where): Uppsala
• (when): 2017

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/201487
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET