Research by Professor Fatih Guvenen on Income Inequality

Research by Professor Fatih Guvenen (University of Minnesota Department of Economics) on income inequality contributes to the heightening scientific and public debate on the topic. Guvenen and his co-authors use the US Social Security Administration database which contains information about the incomes of Americans in the workforce between 1957-2013. The scale and the time horizon of the study makes it one of the most comprehensive and detailed studies of the topic so far. The research and its results have been featured frontpage by the business and economics supplement of New York Times on September 18, 2017 (link). In the article, Guvenen states that after 1967, each successive generation saw a decline in median incomes, cumulating to a 19 percent drop by 2013, whereas incomes at the top 5 percentile continued to grow. While increasing trends in inequality have been observed in other countries, the increase in the US stands out. According to the OECD Income Distribution database, Turkey and US are the third and fourth most unequal countries among the OECD members of developed and higher-middle income countries (link).

Fatih Guvenen is the Curtis L. Carlson professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and a research associate in the NBER’s Economic Fluctuations and Growth Program. He also serves as an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. His full Bio can be found here.