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Australia’s top earners have increased their share of income more than three fold over the last three decades, according to updated research based on a 2006 paper.
The study, conducted by ANU economist Professor Andrew Leigh from the Research School of Economics, in conjunction with Oxford University’s Sir Tony Atkinson, used taxation statistics to estimate the share of income held by the rich between 1921 and 2007.
The researchers also found that the income share of the country’s best paid workers was rising at a rate far outpacing ordinary workers.
Research conducted in 2006 has been updated to include the results to the 2007-08 tax year (the latest available from the ATO). A new paper has not been written but the calculations are available in tthe Excel spreadsheet.
Abstract from the 2006 article
A.B. Atkinson and Andrew Leigh estimate the income share held by top income groups in Australia over the period 1921–2002. They find that the income share of the richest fell from the 1920s until the mid-1940s, rose briefly in the post-war decade, and then declined until the early-1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s, top income shares rose rapidly. At the start of the twenty-first century, the income share of the richest was higher than it had been at any point in the previous fifty years.
Among top income groups, recent decades have also seen a rise in the share of top income accruing to the super-rich. Trends in top income shares are similar to those observed among other elite groups, such as judges, politicians, top bureaucrats and CEOs. The authors speculate that changes in top income shares may have been affected by top marginal tax rates, skill-biased technological change, social norms about inequality, and the internationalisation of the market for English-speaking CEOs.
