Policy uncertainty and income distribution: Asymmetric evidence from state‐level data in the United States

Previous studies that tried to assess the effects of an uncertainty measure on income distribution in the United States used volatility of income as a measure of uncertainty. We use the policy uncertainty index as our measure of uncertainty, which is said to be much more comprehensive than income volatility and assess its asymmetric impact on a measure of income inequality in each state of the United States We find much more significant results compared to previous studies. While we find short‐run asymmetric effects of policy uncertainty in 41 states, short‐run effects translate into the long‐run asymmetric effects in 25 states. Furthermore, we find that while in 20 states decreased policy uncertainty worsened income inequality in 14 states increased policy uncertainty improved it.