Income risk inequality: Evidence from Spanish administrative records

Abstract

In this paper, we use administrative data from the social security to study incomedynamics and income risk inequality in Spain between 2005 and 2018. We con-struct individual measures of income risk as functions of past employment his-tory, income, and demographics. Focusing on males, we document that incomerisk is highly unequal in Spain: More than half of the economy has close to perfectpredictability of their income, while some face considerable uncertainty. Incomerisk is inversely related to income and age, and income risk inequality increases.