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Investment in Qualityincome, however, has been limited for two reasons: first, the profitsof multinationals which dominate trends in the overall profit shareare not part of Irish households’ income; second, among Irishownedcompanies, profits only affect households when distributedto shareholders.Thus, despite the rising profit share in national output and decliningwage share, the distribution of market income has been fairly stablein recent years and became somewhat more equally distributedbetween 1994 and 1998, as noted in 2.2.3 above.TABLE 2.14Trends in Earnings Dispersion, Ireland and Other OECD Countries,1987-1994CountryTop Decile/Bottom Decile1987 1994 ChangeCanada** 4.45 4.18 -0.27Germany* 2.83 2.80 -0.03Belgium* 2.45 2.24 -0.19Finland 2.51 2.35 -0.16Japan 3.15 3.01 -0.14Sweden 2.10 2.18 0.08Australia 2.81 2.86 0.05Netherlands 2.53 2.58 0.05France 3.18 3.08 -0.10UK 3.31 3.39 0.08New Zealand** 2.83 3.03 0.20Austria 3.47 3.65 0.18Italy* 2.30 2.33 0.03USA 4.24 4.52 0.29Ireland 3.67 4.06 0.39Source: Barrett et al. (2000), Table 7.3* = 1993 not 1994; ** = 1988 not 1987.114