Inequality by the Numbers

Wealth in the United States: How Concentrated?
Adapted by Too Much from Arthur B. Kennickell, Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in the U.S., 1989-2004, Federal Reserve Board, January 30, 2006. In 2004, America’s top 1 percent held 33.4 percent of the nation’s net worth, the bottom 90 percent only 30.4 percent (Kennickell Table 11a). The top 1 percent’s share equaled $16,774.4 billion, the bottom 90 percent’s $15,324.5 billion. But this top 1 percent total, drawn from the Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, does not count the wealth of America’s very richest households, the families of the Forbes 400. In 2004, the Forbes 400 alone owned over a trillion dollars worth of wealth (Kennickell Table 1). We have computed this Forbes wealth into this Too Much chart.

America's Income Distribution: Quite a Bit Top-Heavy, Too
This income pyramid is adapted from 2004 income data published by the Congressional Budget Office in December 2006. The CBO calculates “pretax comprehensive income” figures that include “all cash income (both taxable and tax-exempt), taxes paid by businesses (which are imputed to individuals, as noted above), employees’ contributions to 401(k) retirement plans, and the value of income received in-kind from various sources (such as employer-paid health insurance premiums, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, and food stamps).” For more, see the CBO's paper, Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2004.

So What's New? Don't the Rich Always Get Richer?
This chart tracks data presented by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty in Table A3 of their paper, Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998. This table appeared in a 2007 update. For a concise summary of the basic Saez-Piketty calculations, check their January 2006 paper, The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective.