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What's with the Swedish data around 1990?

Not sure - I don't understand Swedish. I'm guessing that there was a series break, which is why I plotted the graph as two separate lines, overlapping during 1989-1990.

Great chart! (But I do cringe when people edit the Oy axis, out of generic-data-display/Tufte-is-king concerns.)

Great chart! I would not have guessed that the GINI coefficient for Canada had been relatively flat for the last 12 years or so.

LOL.. My copying Gabriel's first comment was entirely unintentional.

Ummm... Elephant in the room 1960-1990 female participation rate. I suppose it is not PC to mention it.

Possibly, especially if it's accompanied with 'assortive marriage' (in which high-earners marry each other). It'd be a good idea to check female participation rates.

Update: I just checked to see if female participation rates stopped rising in 1995 or so. They haven't; the trend is still positive.

Leo Johnson did an analysis of Income Tax Statistics that basically said that income distribution peaked in 1948 and has been downhill since then. He didn't compute Gini, he measured income by decile for tax filers. The bottom decile dropped in both absolute and relative terms from 1948.

http://books.google.com/books?id=EdqAfRb95vsC&pg=PA351&lpg=PA351&dq=leo+johnson+income+distribution&source=web&ots=YnDgVt5BNW&sig=L4rS_7daDxEoiWufLPhdDaqm7Sk#PPA352,M1

Is a reference from a book from Cy Gonick.

A version of his work could conceivably be found in the CRTC archives in the evidence presented to the Bell Canada "B" Rate Case from about 1972.

That didn't work try this http://tinyurl.com/2jqpzb

I'm still not convinced that supply side factors are not important. The proportion of well educated women entering the work force has also been increasing.

"What's with the Swedish data around 1990?"

According to statistic Sweden the tax reform of 1990/91 affected the comparability between the time period before and after the tax reform. So for the years 1989 and -90 they calculated the numbers both according to the old and the new taxation system

Thanks very much for that, David.

These estimates are biased by a wrong approach. Standard ways to calculate gini ratio adopted in many countries are based on an arbitrary portion of population. One has to bear in mind thgat there are MANY definitions of income and thus many gini ratios. Publsihed ar those based on the narrowest definition provided by internal revenue (tax) offices. Due to the smallest coverage they are the most biased.

So, one has to develop a better methodology.
SOme details are presented in my papers on Gini in the USA, which show no change in Gini related by personal incomes as measured by the Census Bureau in Current Population Surveys.

Kitov, I., (2007). Modeling the evolution of Gini coefficient for personal incomes in the USA between 1947 and 2005, Working Papers 67, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality. www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2007-67.pdf

Kitov, I., (2007). Comparison of personal income inequality estimates based on data from the IRS and Census Bureau, MPRA Paper 5372, University Library of Munich, Germany, http:// mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5372/01/MPRA_paper_5372.pdf

These estimates are biased by a wrong approach. Standard ways to calculate gini ratio adopted in many countries are based on an arbitrary portion of population. One has to bear in mind thgat there are MANY definitions of income and thus many gini ratios. Publsihed ar those based on the narrowest definition provided by internal revenue (tax) offices. Due to the smallest coverage they are the most biased.

So, one has to develop a better methodology.
SOme details are presented in my papers on Gini in the USA, which show no change in Gini related by personal incomes as measured by the Census Bureau in Current Population Surveys.

Kitov, I., (2007). Modeling the evolution of Gini coefficient for personal incomes in the USA between 1947 and 2005, Working Papers 67, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality. www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2007-67.pdf

Kitov, I., (2007). Comparison of personal income inequality estimates based on data from the IRS and Census Bureau, MPRA Paper 5372, University Library of Munich, Germany, http:// mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5372/01/MPRA_paper_5372.pdf

You should really use after tax income as it is closer to what people actually end up with. this ignores the role of social programs.

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