Antoine Bozio, Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, M. Guillot, Thomas Piketty
{"title":"Predistribution versus Redistribution: Evidence from France and the United States","authors":"Antoine Bozio, Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, M. Guillot, Thomas Piketty","doi":"10.1257/app.20220023","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We construct series of posttax income for France over the 1900–2018 period and compare them with US series. We quantify the extent of redistribution—the reduction from pretax to posttax inequality—and estimate the contribution of redistribution in explaining differences in posttax inequality. We find that differences in pretax inequality drive most of the differences in posttax inequality between France and the United States, and that changes over time in both countries are mostly due to changes in pretax inequality. We highlight that the concept of redistribution can be empirically misleading for judging how policies reduce inequalities. (JEL D31, H23, H24, H31, I38)","PeriodicalId":518829,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Applied Economics","volume":"614 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Economic Journal: Applied Economics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20220023","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We construct series of posttax income for France over the 1900–2018 period and compare them with US series. We quantify the extent of redistribution—the reduction from pretax to posttax inequality—and estimate the contribution of redistribution in explaining differences in posttax inequality. We find that differences in pretax inequality drive most of the differences in posttax inequality between France and the United States, and that changes over time in both countries are mostly due to changes in pretax inequality. We highlight that the concept of redistribution can be empirically misleading for judging how policies reduce inequalities. (JEL D31, H23, H24, H31, I38)