TY - JOUR
T1 - Top Earners
T2 - Cross-country Facts
AU - Badel, Alejandro
AU - Daly, Moira K.
AU - Huggett, Mark
AU - Nybom, Martin
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - We provide a common set of life cycle earnings statistics based on administrative data from the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Sweden. We find three qualitative patterns, which are common across countries. First, top-earnings inequality increases over the working lifetime. Second, the extreme right tail of the earnings distribution becomes thicker with age over the working lifetime. Third, top lifetime earners exhibit dramatic earnings growth over their working lifetime. Models of top earners should account for these three patterns and, importantly, for how they quantitatively differ across countries.
AB - We provide a common set of life cycle earnings statistics based on administrative data from the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Sweden. We find three qualitative patterns, which are common across countries. First, top-earnings inequality increases over the working lifetime. Second, the extreme right tail of the earnings distribution becomes thicker with age over the working lifetime. Third, top lifetime earners exhibit dramatic earnings growth over their working lifetime. Models of top earners should account for these three patterns and, importantly, for how they quantitatively differ across countries.
U2 - 10.20955/r.100.237-57
DO - 10.20955/r.100.237-57
M3 - Journal article
VL - 100
SP - 237
EP - 257
JO - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Review
JF - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Review
SN - 0014-9187
IS - 3
ER -