Full Citation

Title: Race, gender and the econophysics of income distribution in the USA

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2014

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Abstract: The econophysics two-class theory of Yakovenko and his co-authors shows that the distribution of labor incomes is roughly exponential. This paper extends this result to US subgroups categorized by gender and race. It is well known that Males have higher average incomes than Females, and Whites have higher average incomes than African-Americans. It is also evident that social policies can affect these income gaps. Our surprising finding is that nonetheless intra-group distributions of pre-tax labor incomes are remarkably similar and remain close to exponential. This suggests that income inequality can be usefully addressed by taxation policies, and overall income inequality can be modified by also shifting the balance between labor and property incomes.

Url: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437114006153

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Authors: Shaikh, Anwar; Papanikolaou, Nikolaos; Wiener, Noe

Periodical (Full): Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications

Issue:

Volume: 415

Pages: 54-60

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Gender, Methodology and Data Collection, Other, Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity

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