TY - JOUR AU - Heathcote,Jonathan AU - Perri,Fabrizio AU - Violante,Giovanni L. TI - Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States, 1967-2006 JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15483 PY - 2009 Y2 - November 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15483 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15483.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jonathan Heathcote Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department 90 Hennepin Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55401 Tel: (612) 204-6385 E-Mail: heathcote@minneapolisfed.org Fabrizio Perri University of Minnesota Department of Economics 4-177 Hanson Hall Minneapolis, MN 55455 Tel: 612/625-7504 Fax: 612/624-0209 E-Mail: fperri@umn.edu Giovanni L. Violante Department of Economics New York University 19 W. 4th Street New York, NY 10012-1119 Tel: 212/992-9771 Fax: 212/995-3932 E-Mail: glv2@nyu.edu M1 - published as Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 15-51, January. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Code and data files for "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006"," Computer Codes 09-214, Review of Economic Dynamics. AB - We conduct a systematic empirical study of cross-sectional inequality in the United States, integrating data from the Current Population Survey, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and the Survey of Consumer Finances. In order to understand how different dimensions of inequality are related via choices, markets, and institutions, we follow the mapping suggested by the household budget constraint from individual wages to individual earnings, to household earnings, to disposable income, and, ultimately, to consumption and wealth. We document a continuous and sizable increase in wage inequality over the sample period. Changes in the distribution of hours worked sharpen the rise in earnings inequality before 1982, but mitigate its increase thereafter. Taxes and transfers compress the level of income inequality, especially at the bottom of the distribution, but have little effect on the overall trend. Finally, access to financial markets has limited both the level and growth of consumption inequality. ER -