Search Results

SORT BY: PREVIOUS / NEXT
Jel Classification:D31 

Working Paper
Earnings Shocks and Stabilization During COVID-19

This paper documents the magnitude and distribution of U.S. earnings changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and how fiscal relief offset lost earnings. We build panels from administrative tax data to measure annual earnings changes. The frequency of earnings declines during the pandemic were similar to the Great Recession, but the distribution was very different. In 2020, workers starting in the bottom half of the distribution were more likely to experience large annual earnings declines and a similar share of male and female workers had large earnings declines. While most workers experiencing ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2021-052

Working Paper
Has Intergenerational Progress Stalled? Income Growth Over Five Generations of Americans

We find that each of the past four generations of Americans was better off than the previous one, using a post-tax, post-transfer income measure constructed annually from 1963-2022 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. At age 36–40, Millennials had a real median household income that was 18 percent higher than that of the previous generation at the same age. This rate of intergenerational progress was slower than that experienced by the Silent Generation (34 percent) and Baby Boomers (27 percent), but similar to that experienced by Generation X (16 ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2024-007

Working Paper
Family characteristics and macroeconomic factors in U. S. intragenerational family income mobility, 1978–2014

Family economic mobility has been a policy concern for decades, with interest heating up further since the 1990s. Using data that tracks individual families? incomes during overlapping 10-year periods from 1978 through 2014, this paper investigates the relationships of factors ? family characteristics and macro influences ? to intragenerational mobility and whether the importance of those factors has changed over time. Family characteristics include both levels of work behavior and family structure and within-period changes in those factors, as well as time-invariant characteristics of the ...
Working Papers , Paper 19-1

Working Paper
Household Incomes in Tax Data : Using Addresses to Move from Tax Unit to Household Income Distributions

Tax return data are increasingly the standard for tracking income statistics in the United States. However, these data have traditionally been limited by their inability to capture non-filers and to identify members of separate tax units living in the same household. We overcome these obstacles and create household records directly in the tax data using mailing address information included on tax forms. We then present the first set of tax-based household income and inequality measures for the entire income distribution. When comparing household income inequality results in the tax data to ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2017-002

Journal Article
Recent Changes in U.S. Family Finances: Results from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances

Using data from the Federal Reserve Board's two most recent Surveys of Consumer Finances, this article provides a detailed picture of changes in the financial condition of U.S. families between 1995 and 1998. The financial situation of families changed notably in the three-year period. While income continued a moderate upward trend, net worth grew strongly, and the increase in net worth was broadly shared by different demographic groups. A booming stock market accounts for a substantial part of the rise in net worth, but the data also suggest that improvements in financial circumstances ...
Federal Reserve Bulletin , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , Pages pp. 1-29

Working Paper
Seven Economic Facts About the U.S. Racial Wealth Gap

Using data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances and the U.S. Census Bureau, along with data and research from other sources, this paper presents seven economic facts about the racial wealth gap in the U.S. We present data on racial disparities in income, employment, homeownership, education, access to credit, and retirement savings – all factors that contribute to a significant and persistent gap in net worth between households of different races and ethnicities, particularly between Black households and White households. While none of the economic factors listed fully explains the ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP 2022-32

Working Paper
How Much has Wealth Concentration Grown in the United States? A Re-Examination of Data from 2001-2013

Well known research based on capitalized income tax data shows robust growth in wealth concentration in the late 2000s. We show that these robust growth estimates rely on an assumption---homogeneous rates of return across the wealth distribution---that is not supported by data. When the capitalization model incorporates heterogeneous rates of return (on just interest-bearing assets), wealth concentration estimates in 2011 fall from 40.5% to 33.9%. These estimates are consistent in levels and trend with other micro wealth data and show that wealth concentration increases until the Great ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2018-024

Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information

This paper studies the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. We consider a model in which a principal insures an agent whose privately observed endowment follows an ergodic, finite Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, the optimal contract also features backloaded high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his report increases without bound. ...
Working Papers , Paper 2018-020

Report
Income Inequality and Job Creation

We propose a novel channel through which rising income inequality affects job creation and macroeconomic outcomes. High-income households save relatively more in stocks and bonds but less in bank deposits. A rising top income share thereby increases the relative financing cost for bank-dependent firms, which in turn create fewer jobs. Exploiting variation in top income shares across US states and an instrumental variable strategy, we provide evidence for this channel. We then build a general equilibrium macro model with heterogeneous households and heterogeneous firms and calibrate it to our ...
Staff Reports , Paper 1021

FILTER BY year

FILTER BY Content Type

FILTER BY Author

Larrimore, Jeff 12 items

Thompson, Jeffrey P. 11 items

Athreya, Kartik B. 10 items

Mather, Ryan 9 items

Mustre-del-Rio, Jose 9 items

Sanchez, Juan M. 9 items

show more (224)

FILTER BY Jel Classification

E21 42 items

E24 25 items

D14 19 items

G11 18 items

G21 18 items

show more (114)

PREVIOUS / NEXT