AS HIGH income earners enjoy the latest tax cuts, a new study says people missing out could be waiting until 2022 to benefit from knock-on effects.
The Government faced criticism this week over tax cuts skewed towards the wealthy.
Critics say they will add to the budget deficit with little economic benefit. A group of Australian and US economists question the so-called "trickle down effect", which claims society wins from the rich taking a bigger share of the pie because it fuels growth.
Looking at 12 countries over the last century, the study found it took 13 years for a rise in the incomes of the wealthiest 10 per cent to benefit the rest of the population. One of the authors, Andrew Leigh of the Australian National University, said high-end tax cuts were just one type of policy that bred inequality.
"When you cut taxes for the rich then their share of income goes up," Professor Leigh said.
In Australia, the share of national income going to the wealthiest 10 per cent has risen from 25 per cent in the early 1980s to 31 per cent earlier this decade.
Professor Leigh said this had added about 0.5 per cent to Australia's yearly growth rate.
"It's true that this makes the country grow faster, but it's not sufficiently good for growth that the bottom 90 per cent ought to keep voting for tax cuts for the top 10 per cent," he said. Over the same period, the share of income held by the wealthiest 1 per cent had almost doubled from 5 per cent to 9 per cent.
"The rich have got richer, but the super-duper rich have grown richer still," he said.
A similar change has occurred across the English-speaking world in recent decades.
