Income distribution and redistribution in African countries: Preliminary evidence from Uganda fiscal records

The lecture's goal is to illustrate empirical facts about the way income is distributed and redistributed in a fast developing economy, Uganda, and more broadly in African countries. Earnings, wages, rents, capital income and non-market income contribute in defining the distribution of income across families and individuals. Fiscal policy and government transfers redistribute income to mitigate extreme poverty and to grant broad access to fundamental services. What factors drive the shape of the income distribution? Who is benefitting from large income growth in Uganda (about 4.5% yearly according to the World Bank)? To what extent taxation redistributes resources? What are the implications for individual income growth patterns? This lecture will explain how fiscal records can help answering these questions. The answers are of clear interest both to firms willing to invest in African economics and bound to interact with the local labour market and with the fiscal authority, as well as to firms willing to sell products therein, which are likely more interested in the size of the middle class and the growth patterns of their incomes.


Structure of the lecture:  

1.  Economic development in Uganda in a nutshell
2.  Economic inequality in Uganda in comparative perspective (earlier evidence)
3. Taxation in Uganda
4.  Using tax data to study income inequality
   • formal/informal sectors
   • tax declaration process
   • upsides and downsides
5. Income inequality in Uganda based on tax records
6. income mobility in Uganda based on tax records

Markus Jäntti is Professor of economics at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, Stock-
holm, Sweden. He has been appointed research director of the Luxembourg Income Study - LIS.  His research  centers on income and wealth inequality and poverty and socio-economic mobility, especially in a cross-national perspective. He has used big data for socio-economic research, comprising register data and fisal records, to study the importance of family background in the distribution of economic resources. His research appears in multiple outlets, including American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of Public Economics.