Women In Top Income Brackets
Income inequality among women can be visualized with the use of data compiled by Atkins, Casarico, and Voitchovsky (2018)[1]. In this case, I have chosen to represent the data in a series of steam graph area charts, which suggest the lack of growth in the percentage of women’s income at the highest levels of earning. . Between the period of 2000-2010, it becomes clear that women’s earnings rarely reach into the highest of income brackets, and that progress to shatter the glass ceiling has been slow, or non-existent in some cases where there are no women in high income brackets. The data represents women across several of the world’s highest earning nations, and breaks down the earnings of women into different categories, depending on high their income is. In the works of Atkins, Casarico, and Voitchovsky (2018)[2], the incomes of women were investigated using tax records, in nations where taxes are collected on an individual basis rather than from couples. Wages, investments, and self-employment were also taken into account when gathering the data. The charts indicate a strong disparity between the number of women in the top 10% of earners, in comparison to the top 0.25%.
Data from this study has also been visualized in various forms to indicate the variances in income distribution among women[3]. The charts indicate that the proportion of women becomes lower as the income bracket becomes higher, and that women are under-represented in the top income groups. Although there has been growth in these areas, the visualizations have shown how limited this growth has been across several countries. While some nations have seen growth in the number of women earning at higher levels, there has not been as great of a change in the highest income brackets, where men make up the majority of the income group.
Visualization of the dataset in the format of steam graphs also allows for in depth analysis, as we can compare the data across three different categories: countries, time, and specific income brackets. This allows us to visualize a trend of slow growth in women’s earnings over a ten-year period, and raises questions such as ‘why is the growth so slow?’, ‘what is preventing women from earning as much as men?’, or ‘why do some nations with the highest level of income not have any women in their top income brackets?’. Graphs for each country provide comparison between the nations with the highest income, while sections of the graph show the difference between the share of women in individual income brackets, which can be filtered for closer analysis. I chose to present the data over a ten year period, as the dataset provides information from 1980 to 2015, and the 2000-2010 period shows the earnings of women slowly entering higher income brackets.
[1] Atkinson, A.B., Casarico, A. & Voitchovsky, S. Top incomes and the gender divide. J Econ Inequal 16, 225–256 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-018-9384-z
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2018) – “Economic inequality by gender”. [online] OurWorldInData.org. [Accessed 18/11/2020] ‘https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality-by-gender’