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This paper examines the behavior of inequality in the distribution of family income under the different macroeconomic regimes in force during the last four decades in Argentina. It also evaluates the factors explaining the changes thereof. This work examines the hypothesis that during the said decades an inequality matrix associated with a persistent structural heterogeneity in the social-occupational systems would have been established, even though if there was a context of active distributive policies. To prove this hypothesis, a model is developed to decompose the Gini coefficient, distinguishing the income contribution to the family-income inequality by different economic sectors. The information is gathered by using the Household Permanent Survey of the Argentinian National Institute for Statistics and Census, specifically, the one applied to the Great Buenos Aires as it was the only one having complete information for the study term. The findings reveal that the highest distributive inequality is explained with a higher inequity in labor earnings, higher concentration of income by the most upgraded economic sectors and the impoverishment of the low-productivity sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]