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

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.