paper

Evidence for the Independence of Waged and Unwaged Income, Evidence for Boltzmann Distributions in Waged Income, and the Outlines of a Coherent Theory of Income Distribution

arXiv:cond-mat/0406694

Abstract

Two sets of high quality income data are analysed in detail, one set from the UK, one from the USA. It is firstly demonstrated that both a log-normal distribution and a Boltzmann distribution can give very accurate fits to both these data sets. The absence of a power tail in the US data set is then discussed. Taken in conjunction with detailed evidence from the UK and Japanese income data, a strong case is made for the mathematically separate treatment of waged and unwaged income. The authors present a case for preferring the use of the Boltzmann distribution over the log-normal function, this leads to a brief review of the work of a number of researchers, which shows that a coherent theory for the distribution of all income can be postulated.

28 pages,31 figures

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