한국의 가계소득 불평등과 근로소득의 역할

초록

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the role of the labour income in explaining the household income inequality in Korea. We use the households panel data from the Households Finance and Welfare Survey from 2012 to 2016. Before decomposing the household income inequality in accordance with the income components, we estimate the households finance and rental income using the household finance and property assets in the Households Finance and Welfare Survey in order to supplement the under-reported household property income. We show that the labour income plays the biggest role in the households income inequality in Korea. In particular, the contribution of the labour income is getting larger since 2012. The role of the second contributor, the business income, to the households income inequality is getting smaller. We also find that the property income accounts for about 11-12 percent of the household income inequality. The extent of the property income contribution is much higher than the findings from the previous researches. In particular, we show that the household income inequality is mainly associated with the labour income for the lower income group. In contrast, we find that the business and property incomes play more important role in explaining the household income inequality for the higher income group, and the role of the property income is getting more important than the role of the business income.

키워드