Evolving Contributions of Various Income Sources to U.S. Income Inequality Across Age Groups

This paper studies the age-group-specific evolutions of inequality of total income among highly and less educated females and males at ages 26–85 from 2005 to 2018 in the United States. In particular, it presents time series of Gini coefficients and associated decompositions by different income components to highlight the contributions of different income sources to inequality in different age groups over time. The results indicate, among others, that especially an increasing number of individuals with zero incomes contributed to the observed increases of inequality among less educated females and males aged 26–45 and 26–55 after the Great Recession, respectively.