Public Finance, 3rd Edition

Economy-Wide Incidence Studies

In 1980, Alan Blinder published a study of the personal distribution of income in the United States covering the 30-year period from 1947 to 1977 (Blinder, 1980); 1947 was the year that the federal government began collecting data on the personal distribution. Blinder's main conclusion was that the distribution was essentially unchanged during those 30 years, a conclusion that surprised him given the economic and demographic turmoil during those years and the rapid growth of the government sector into domestic areas.

The timing of Blinder's study was somewhat ironic, because subsequent research revealed that the personal distribution of income started to become more unequal sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s, a trend ...