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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18926
September 2026
The Evolution of UK Income Inequality: A GB2 Distribution Perspective

This paper fits four-parameter GB2 distributions to UK unit record household survey data for 42 years from 1977 to 2018. Parameter estimates are used to describe key features of the household income distribution and its evolution over time, including inequality. The paper also discusses and illustrates issues of statistical inference and data quality, and the relative goodness of fit of distributions that are special cases of the GB2. Singh-Maddala distributions typically fit better than Dagum distributions, and the two-parameter Fisk distribution fits the UK income distribution well for almost every year in the 2003–2018 period.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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