[Durham INC] A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

[bonita green]

*Income Concentration Has Returned to 1920s Levels*

The Piketty-Saez estimates derived from IRS tax data put the increasing
concentration of income at the top of the distribution in a longer-term
historical context.[31] As Figure 3 shows, the top 1 percent’s share of
income before transfers and taxes has been rising since the late 1970s, and
in recent decades has climbed to levels not seen since the 1920s. The vast
majority of the increase occurred among the top 0.5 percent of
households.[32]

The increase in income concentration since the 1970s reversed the prior,
long-term downward trend. After peaking in 1928, the share of income held
by households at the very top of the income ladder declined through the
1930s and 1940s. Consistent with the shared prosperity found in the Census
data on average family income, the share of income received by those at the
very top changed little over the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. The sharp
rise in income concentration at the top since the late 1970s was
interrupted briefly by the dot-com collapse in the early 2000s and again in
2008 with the onset of the financial crisis and Great Recession, but top
incomes generally have been on the rise since 2009. The Piketty-Saez data
show the same pattern in 2012-16 as CBOs, with a further rise in top income
shares in 2017.



<goog_558501784>
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email



be a kind human
Bonita Green
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.deltaforce.net/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20220927/a2c4a65d/attachment.htm>