Chapter 10 - Do the Rich Pay the Poor for All This?

Summary

Starting from estimates of fiscal distribution within each of 53 countries, we can begin mapping a history of how redistribution has evolved historically, and to project some influences on its trends in the next few decades. There has been a global shift toward progressive redistribution over the last hundred years in all prosperous countries. The retreats toward regressive redistribution have been rare and have been reversed. As a corollary, the disturbing rise in income inequality since the 1970s owes nothing to any retreat from progressive government redistribution. Adding the effects of rising subsidies for public education on the later inequality of adult earning power strongly suggests that a fuller, longer-run measure of fiscal incidence would reveal a history of still greater shift toward progressive redistribution, most notably in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. See Appendix B for detailed sources and notes.