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The article presents critical discussion of two papers by George Garvy and Edward F. Denison on the distribution of national income. According to the author Garvy has expressed some doubt as to the existence of a long-term trend of diminishing income inequality. Both manners have also stressed the very crucial choice of income definitions and the basic family unit used in measuring inequality statistically. Garvy has also suggested an interesting change in the income unit used to measure inequality. The usual per capita income measure may be useful from a welfare standpoint or in relation to consumer demand. Commenting on the paper by Denison, the author says that he has identified the ordinary business sector and then, within that division, distinguished several farm and non-farm ownership forms and property income sources. At the end of his paper, Denison introduced the government as tax collector and payer of transfer incomes. The author applaud his remarks on the effect of taxes and transfers and regret that the scope of his paper could not have been somehow extended to include more discussion of income redistribution.

This paper analyzes the role of social reform in reducing the degree of inequality of opportunity in a capitalist society. The primary source of the data is a 1962 Current Population Survey, augmented by data from the National Opinion Research Center and other sources. The contribution of inequality of educational opportunity to the correlation between socioeconomic background and income is significant. By far the largest contribution, however, is the direct effect of socioeconomic background. Three immediate objectives of employers seem relevant to the formulation of job-adequacy criteria: the technical efficiency of the productive process, the maintenance of secure top-down control over production, and the legitimation of the authority structure and property relations of the enterprise. Differentiation occurs also within each level of schooling. The correspondence between the social relations of production and the social relations of childhood socialization itself is not, however, confined to schooling. There is strong evidence for a similar correspondence in the structure of family life. Thus criteria of worker adequacy reflect more than the employer's desire that workers be hardworking and capable. They reflect as well the need for acquiescence to the employer's monopolization of power. Yet the perpetuation of economic inequality does not originate with the family or the school, for the structure of home life and of education is but a reflection of the broader social structure.

In this article the author argues that in an important sense the stability of the distribution of national income by type has indeed been maintained in quite striking degree, aside from cyclical movements. However, it is important to understand the sense in which this is so, and much of the paper is directed to this end. It is found in several studies that the move towards less dispersion in the size distribution of income has resulted in part from a relative reduction in the sources of income which are of disproportionate importance to upper income groups. The distribution of income by types is thus found in one context to contribute importantly to a very marked lessening of relative income differences while in another it can be viewed as substantially stable in the long run. This is due to the use of different income concepts and to consideration of separate sectors of the economy as against treatment of the economy as a whole. The author tries to indicate the significance of these differences.

This paper takes as its starting point the postulate that in most developed countries today, a diminution of the current inequality of income distribution is something that should be welcomed. There are important differences of opinion about the reasons for regarding inequality as excessive, when it gets beyond a certain point, about the speed at which it is desirable that inequality should diminish, and about the earnestness with which one should insist upon the significance of the obvious distinction between diminishing inequality and establishing equality. An examination of these differences is, however, for the most part not necessary for the purposes of the present discussion, which is designed primarily to bring out the significance of the contrast between the two main approaches commonly used in elaborating techniques for the diminution of inequality. Nevertheless, the decision to place the greater emphasis on one or other of these approaches is a matter of considerable practical importance and is likely, moreover, to reflect still more profound differences in economic and social philosophy. The causes which have produced the current pattern of income distribution are complex.

This article focuses on an interesting and important concept of inequality and, it would seem, one indicated by conventional thinking on this subject. But in view of the aspects just mentioned, exclusive preoccupation with inequality in this sense might lead to a rather one-sided view of what is really of concerns the people. The second kind of inequality would diverge from the first as a result of direct taxes and subsidies and also certain other factors, particularly monopoly profits and exploitation. To put the matter in somewhat different terms, what is in question here seems essentially to be a valuation problem-a-problem of how to value, for purposes of measuring inequality, the different commodities entering into "real" income. The author talks about the procedure of valuing the different commodities in accord with their market prices or, assuming a relatively effective market, their relative utilities. The author refers in his paper to the large question of the effect of taxation and other measures for the equalization of income or incentives.

In this article the author comments on the paper by Robert R. Schutz on income inequality. According to the author the measure of inequality involves two types of descriptive devices. These devices include a table of chart by means of which the different parts of a distribution may be compared, and an over-all index for comparing different distributions as a whole. Schutz deals with both types. Schutz objects to the crudity and ambiguity of the Gini ratio. The comparisons of sensitivity are not very useful unless, on the basis of a clearly defined concept of inequality, one can specify precisely the changes in the income distribution which the index should reflect. The author suggests that the best measure of inequality may be the standard deviation of the logarithms of income, since these may be assumed to be normally, or at least symmetrically distributed, without excessive lack of realism. The one practical advantage that the relative mean deviation has over the other measures is that it is easier to compute.

The article presents the information that there are two ways to alter the pattern of economic inequality among persons. One is to modify the distribution of factor income by changing the underlying distribution of factors or prices or employment of those factors. The second is to modify the process by which factor income is redistributed away from its recipients. The article discusses the second way to alter income distribution. The author asks how the distribution to factor owners is and can be modified as income moves from its market origins to its disposition on goods and services. At the outset, the author sketches an accounting framework within which to envision this process whereby "producer incomes" are transformed into "user incomes." In later sections, the author reviews some current proposals for additional transfers to the poor. According to the author, the redistributive process involves receipts and payments of both money and non-money character. It occurs via private as well as public institutions, including the employer, the government agency, the private insurance carrier, the private philanthropic agency and the family.

The article discusses postwar changes in the size distribution of income in the U.S. The author reviews recent changes in size distribution in the U.S. He has interpreted "recent" to include the entire postwar period rather than just the past decade. According to the author, most analysts have concluded that, in contrast to changes that appear to have occurred from 1929 to World War II, the relative distribution of income since the war has been quite stable. While perhaps the only inference that the quality of the income size data will support, it may be worthwhile to take another look at the evidence that is there. The widely used Lorenz curve technique for representing relative size distributions may possibly contribute to the acceptance of the stability hypothesis. It is, after all, rather insensitive to all but major changes in distribution. The author states that economists are all too prone to conclude that if Lorenz curves for different years lie close together or if the income shares of various quantile groups change only by a percentage point or two, nothing of consequence has happened to inequality. But this conclusion is incorrect.

For several reasons comparison of standard distributions for prewar and postwar years provides an inadequate basis for the conclusion that income is becoming less unequal in its distribution. There are some changes which it is believed have occurred which tend to make such a comparison an overstatement, and some which tend to make it an understatement of the decreasing inequality of income when income is defined as producer-contribution income, consumer-power income, or general-market-power income. Those which tend to make for over-statement are conversion from nonmarket to market production; increase in the importance of changes in the value of assets; and increases in the importance of expense account items and in-kind payments to employees. Changes in the over-all tax and government expenditure patterns do not seem to have been such that comparison of standard distributions will be seriously misleading. Similarly, consideration of possible discriminatory price changes does not alter conclusions otherwise reached. On the other hand, comparison of standard distributions does not fully suggest the equalization that may have taken place because of the increase in the relative size of high-income families. Also, it may be that equalization of general-market-power income beyond that suggested by comparison of standard distributions has been effected by changes in the rules that govern what money can buy.

The article focuses on the role of trade-unions in equal distribution of income. According to the author to analyses this three questions need to be answered. First is, can trade-unionism redistribute income? Second, does it, within a given context, have the actual power and the motivation to do so? And thirdly, what are the consequences if it both can and does? The author here discusses only one of these questions, that is, whether trade-unionism can affect the distribution of national income as between wages, or wages and salaries, on the one hand, and profits or entrepreneurial income, rent and interest, on the other hand. The focus is on the percentage share of labor in national income and not its absolute share. An examination of the behavior of labor's share may also illuminate the policies of the trade-union movement and indicate which of these policies, if any, may raise, or perhaps reduce, wages as a share of national income and under what circumstances. Any approach to this problem encounters two important obstacles. The first is the great lack of adequate statistical data and the changes in dynamic economy that influence the direction of power in trade-unions.

It is increasingly realized during the past few years that the relative income position in a given year is only one element in determining the level of living. Therefore there is a growing tendency to place less emphasis on the degree of inequality and more on the underlying forces which are mirrored in changes in income-size distributions. In trying to account for cyclical and secular chains in income-size distributions it is logical to seek in the composition of income by type one of the major explanatory variables. Distribution theory deals with functional shares in national income. The author here first discuss some problems involved in relating income-size distributions to distributions by type and then raises some questions on the interpretation of income-size distributions. Much of the early research into income-size distribution was focused on measurement rather than interpretation. In conclusion of the article the author remarks that studies on income-size distributions in foreign countries seem to indicate that the trend toward greater equality manifests itself in such diverse economies as Great Britain and Brazil.

This article analyzes the social and economic determinants of income distribution in the U.S. Urban communities appear to differ in price structure in such a way that income inequality increases as the size of the community increases. Various factors tend to make income inequality persist once it has been established--the mutually supporting relation between income inequality and inequality of investment ownership; the superiority of the opulent at investment management; nepotism; the better education of the children of the opulent. But there are other factors tending to alter the pattern of income size distribution. It is difficult to say confidently today whether the factors making for decreased inequality or the factors making for increased inequality are stronger. We may surmise that consumed income inequality has been decreasing gradually in recent years. For payrolls and the profits of unincorporated business there is a substantial degree of inequality of distribution. These forms of income are most easily regarded as production incentive payments. An incentive system calls for some degree of inequality in job-pay rates. What degree of inequality would provide the most effective scheme of incentives is a question to which we need to give attention.