TY - UNPB

T1 - The distribution of income of self-employed, entrepreneurs and professions as revealed from micro income tax statistics in Germany

AU - Merz, Joachim

PY - 2000/2

Y1 - 2000/2

N2 - As simple as they may be, results describing the world are heavily dependent on the quality of the underlying data. One of the crucial variables in micro-analyses of well-being and human resources is income. This variable becomes even more crucial when the subject of analysis is the situation of the self-employed.This paper focuses on the distribution of income based on very sound data: the German Income Tax Statistics (Einkommensteuerstatistik) 1992. Tbis was the first actual opportunity to use such asound micro-database to analyse the selfemployed in particular: a 100,000 micro-data sampie of the German Income Tax Statistics for the entire population. New is the comparison between income from dependent and self-employed work with an emphasis on entrepreneurs and professions; also new is the in-depth decomposition of inequality by the employment status (employee, entrepreneur, profession) and by single professions based on a generalised entropy decomposition approach.One overall striking result is that the occupational status as an employee, entrepreneur or a professional and its relationship to the share of inequality is hardly the most important factor wh ich explains the overall income distribution and inequality pieture of reunified Germany; rather, it is within-group inequality which has the primary influence.

AB - As simple as they may be, results describing the world are heavily dependent on the quality of the underlying data. One of the crucial variables in micro-analyses of well-being and human resources is income. This variable becomes even more crucial when the subject of analysis is the situation of the self-employed.This paper focuses on the distribution of income based on very sound data: the German Income Tax Statistics (Einkommensteuerstatistik) 1992. Tbis was the first actual opportunity to use such asound micro-database to analyse the selfemployed in particular: a 100,000 micro-data sampie of the German Income Tax Statistics for the entire population. New is the comparison between income from dependent and self-employed work with an emphasis on entrepreneurs and professions; also new is the in-depth decomposition of inequality by the employment status (employee, entrepreneur, profession) and by single professions based on a generalised entropy decomposition approach.One overall striking result is that the occupational status as an employee, entrepreneur or a professional and its relationship to the share of inequality is hardly the most important factor wh ich explains the overall income distribution and inequality pieture of reunified Germany; rather, it is within-group inequality which has the primary influence.

KW - Economics

KW - Einkommensverteilung

KW - Hohe Einkommen

KW - Selbstständige

KW - Unternehmer

KW - Freie Berufe

KW - Einkommensteuerstatistik

KW - Mikroanalyse

KW - Dekomposition der Ungleichheit

KW - income distribution

KW - gini coefficient

KW - income share

KW - redistributional

KW - theil index

M3 - Working papers

T3 - FFB Diskussionspapier

BT - The distribution of income of self-employed, entrepreneurs and professions as revealed from micro income tax statistics in Germany

PB - Universität Lüneburg

CY - Lüneburg

ER -