When thinking of top income in relation to gender, there are several questions that comes to mind: What is the share of women across different top income groups? How has this changed over time? Are there differences in the composition of income between men and women in the top of the distribution? Are top income women different from men along other observable characteristics such as age, education, marital status, and wealth? By using a large, register-based panel data set over the period 1974-2013, Boschini, Gunnarsson and Roine provide answers to these questions.

The study obtains five main findings, one of which is that in terms of income composition women in the top rely more on capital incomes than men. Another finding is that the family situations for men and women in the top 1 group are markedly different – for men in the top 1 group the share of married clearly dominates while only about half of women in the top 1 group are married and the other half is roughly split between non-married, divorced and widows respectively.

Interested in finding out more? Read the full paper here.