개인의 노력 및 선호를 반영한 불평등 측정:등가소득 분석

Abstract

Employing Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS) data, we evaluate the equivalent income of individual wage-earners, which indicates the welfare level accounting for the difference in individual effort and leisure-labor preference. Comparing the distribution between the observed income and the equivalent income, we find that the distribution of the equivalent income, reflecting the disutility from labor effort measured by hours worked, is more unequal than that of the observed income over the whole sample period. The reason is two-fold: high-income earners, on average, work less hours than middle-or-low-income earners, and there are huge differences in hours worked among the workers earning the same level of income. In addition to hours worked, when educational achievement is accounted for as another factor representing individual effort, there is no qualitative change in our main results. While the degree of inequality in the observed income is stable across the sample period, that of inequality in the equivalent income is strikingly mitigated after the Global Financial Crisis. When we estimate the determining factors of inequality, the degree of inequality by father’s or householder’s educational achievement as well as that of one’s own is markedly higher in the equivalent income than in the observed income, while the degree of inequality by sex is lower in the equivalent income than in the observed income. This implies that the well-bred or well-educated workers tend to earn higher income and simultaneously work less.