This article reviews the evidence on cross-national comparisons of earnings and income inequality in OECD countries. It begins with a series of stylized facts which are then examined and supported by recent studies in the field. Economic, demographic, institutional and policy-related influences on earnings and income distribution are reviewed. The paper concludes with a call for more work on empirically testable structural models of household income distribution.

All modern countries are concerned about poverty and inequality amid their populations in general, and with that among their major dependent groups: children and elderly, in particular. The purpose of this paper is to consider the relative economic position of U.S. children and elderly as compared to identical dependent groups in nine other modem industrialized countries. In so doing, we find that some countries are willing to tolerate more inequality among dependents than are other countries.

We present evidence on the level of and trend in inequality from 1985-2010 in the United States, using disposable income and consumption for a sample of individuals from the Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey. Differing from the findings in other recent research, we find that the trends in income and consumption inequality are broadly similar between 1985 and 2006, but diverge during the Great Recession with consumption inequality decreasing and income inequality increasing. Given the differences in the trends in inequality in the last four years, using both income and consumption provides useful information.