Search results for "Adjusted gross income"
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Income Equality and Income Taxation
1994
In every society the distribution of income plays an essential role — not only for economists but also for social scientists and politicians. Most people agree that the laissez-faire allo-cation is not equitable but that some redistribution using taxes has to take place. Most of the literature has supposed that a Bergson- Samuelson social welfare function is the appropriate tool for capturing social values in such analyses. However, there are some objections against this approach. First, interpersonal comparability of the individual utilities is needed — an extremely strong and questionable claim. Second, most writers have worked with a concave transformation of individual cardinal utilitie…
PERMANENT INCOME, CONVERGENCE AND INEQUALITY AMONG COUNTRIES
2008
The literature on inequality has generally focused on the analysis of annual per capita income. This paper adopts a different approach by considering the life-cycle dimension of inequality and convergence between economies from 1960 to 2000. We analyze the present value of the set of incomes individuals obtain throughout their whole life (permanent income). On the basis of this approach, various simulations are made to determine the effect on inequality in permanent income of variables such as survival rates and the long-run growth rates in current income. The results indicate that survival rates are an important source of inequality. Inequality in permanent income is about one third higher…