Research on the development of income distribution in Switzerland shows that on the whole, income disparities started to decline in the early 1970s and then, after briefly stabilizing, began to grow again in the 1980s. Two points are worth noting in this regard: firstly, evidence suggests that disparities in the lower income brackets bad already begun to increase in the early 1970s; secondly, the development of real income suggests that, between 1972 and 1988, a perceptible shift took place from the middle to the lowerincome brackets.