How Fat is the Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution?

2014/01/01 by Philip Vermeulen · 19 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Health Professions · Mathematics · #Business #Distribution (mathematics) #Economic Growth and Productivity #Economics #Global Health Care Issues #Mathematics

paper · open access · doi:10.1111/roiw.12279

published in Review of Income and Wealth 64(2), 357-387 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2014/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Differential unit non‐response in household wealth surveys biases estimates of top tail wealth shares downward. Using Monte Carlo evidence, I show that adding only a few extreme observations to wealth surveys is sufficient to remove the downward bias. Combining extreme wealth observations from Forbes World's billionaires with the Survey of Consumer Finances, the Wealth and Assets Survey, and the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, I provide new improved estimates of top tail wealth in the United States, the United Kingdom, and nine euro area countries. These new estimates indicate significantly higher top wealth shares than those calculated from the wealth surveys alone.

Citations

• Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data
• Top Wealth Shares in the United States, 1916–2000: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns
• Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden, 1873–2006*

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• Inequality of Opportunity in Wealth: Levels, Trends and Drivers in Germany
• On the emergence of a power law in the distribution of COVID-19 cases. [europepmc]
• The Use of Distributional National Accounts in Better Capturing the Top Tail of the Distribution. [europepmc]
• Joint Income-Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Lucerne Tax Data. [europepmc]
• A study of UK household wealth through empirical analysis and a non-linear Kesten process. [europepmc]
• Emergence of Inequality in Income and Wealth Dynamics. [europepmc]
• GEOWEALTH-US: Spatial wealth inequality data for the United States, 1960-2020. [europepmc]
• Wealth Composition, Distribution, and Transmission: The Graduate Center Wealth Project Data Warehouse. [europepmc]

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