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Publications
Author: Nichols, Austin
Trends in Income Inequality, Volatility, and Mobility Risk (Research Report)
Author(s):
Austin Nichols
A unified measure of inequality, volatility, and mobility risk is developed from well-known decompositions of a generalized entropy inequality measure using panel data. Variation across individuals in mean family income is termed inequality, and the variability of income over time is decomposed into volatility and mobility risk. I apply the decompositions to several decades of U.S. data and find every component increasing over time, and a large impact of taxes. I further find large swings in the progressivity of income growth after taxes that are not observed in pretax income, consistent with the known tax regimes in recent U.S. history.
Published: 11/26/08
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Measuring Trends in Income Variability (Research Report)
Author(s):
Austin Nichols , Seth Zimmerman
Using PSID data from 1968 to 2005, we find that the volatility of family income has increased over time (a trend that is robust to a large variety of modeling choices) but the trend in individual income volatility is less clear. Measurement error cannot fully account for these facts, but the increasing covariance of individual incomes within the family (driven by increases in the correlation of head and spouse earnings, due largely to the increased proportion of families with two earners) can.
Published: 06/03/08
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Low-Income Workers and Their Employers: Characteristics and Challenges (Research Report)
Author(s):
Gregory Acs , Austin Nichols
This paper finds that about one in four workers, ages 18 to 61, earned less than $7.73 an hour in 2003. Low-wage workers who reside in low-income families with children are substantially less educated than the average worker, are concentrated in industries with low wages, and have limited prospects for wage growth. Many policies aimed at low-wage workers are not well-targeted at workers in low-income families with children, in part because only one in four low-wage workers reside in such families. Nevertheless, policies targeted at low-wage workers may have broad benefits, including improving the lot of low-income families with children.
Published: 09/11/07
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An Assessment of the Income and Expenses of America's Low-Income Families Using Survey Data from the National Survey of America's Families (Research Report)
Author(s):
Gregory Acs , Austin Nichols
The policy community is increasingly focusing attention on alleviating the strain on low-income working families, particularly those with children. This paper examines both the income and expenses of these families to see if they are able to meet their expenses with the limited resources at their disposal. We find that low-income working families with at least one full-time, full-year worker fare better than one might expect in 2001, thanks to their work effort, earnings, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, but low-income families without a full-time, full-year worker do not appear to have enough income to cover their basic expenses.
Published: 11/20/06
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Tax-Transfer Policy and Labor Market Outcomes (Research Report)
Author(s):
Nada Eissa , Austin Nichols
The Earned Income Tax Credit provides nearly $40 billion to low-income families with children. A potential unintended consequence of the credit is lower pretax wages, in which case only part of the subsidy would accrue to workers. We examine the extent to which EITC expansions lower the pretax wages of working parents. Our findings are inconclusive. The gross hourly wages of less-skilled single women are found not to vary by the number of children, as does the EITC. In addition, the wages of black single mothers track the minimum wage for nearly the entire time period.
Published: 10/07/05
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