2025 Update: Introducing the THIAs: Total Haig-Simons U.S. Household Income, Consumption, and Wealth Accounts, 1960–2023

Roth, Steve and Bezemer, Dirk (2024): 2025 Update: Introducing the THIAs: Total Haig-Simons U.S. Household Income, Consumption, and Wealth Accounts, 1960–2023.

Abstract

This paper presents the Total Haig-Simons U.S. Household Income Accounts (THIAs), an open-access data set providing balance-sheet-complete measures of income, saving, and wealth accumulation for U.S. households from 1960 to 2023, with prototype distributional estimates for all measures by income quintile since 2000. By integrating NIPA income and saving measures with accrued Holding Gains and Other Volume Changes from the Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts (IMAs), the THIAs construct integrated Haig-Simons income series for use by researchers. Distributional analysis reveals that 86% of Total saving over the past quarter century accrued to the top 20% of households, driven by disproportionate exposure to asset-price appreciation and significantly lower propensities to consume. The data set enables researchers to examine inequality dynamics through a fully integrated income-consumption-wealth lens, addressing researchers’ methodological calls for integrated “3D” national accounts.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: income, wealth, Haig-Simons, equality, inequality, distribution, consumption, saving
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B41 - Economic Methodology; D - Microeconomics > D3 - Distribution > D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O11 - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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