Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. You'll need at least six figures to count yourself among the nation's top earners, according to data published by the Economic Policy Institute EPI in December How much do you need to earn to be in the top 0.
Despite the lack of growth in , historically the rich have become richer faster than the rest of the population. The latest figures were drawn from Social Security Administration data, allowing EPI researchers to estimate wage trends in more precise segments and to measure trends. During the financial crisis from to , wages fell furthest among the top 0. In , the top 0. Income disparity is the most dramatic when you look at how the distribution of wages has changed since If you are not among the top earners and would like to see where you fit in, below are the full details from the EPI study.
To be a top earner in the U. The wealthiest have grown richer much faster than the rest of the population since They get their income from very different sources. They live in different parts of the country. There is a huge amount of diversity, even within a group that we think is small but is actually very big, which is the top 1 percent. When discussing the super-rich, many bring up family dynasties such as the Waltons of Wal-Mart, or the Rockefellers and Koch brothers of energy fortunes.
But who is actually in the 0. Researchers are developing a better understanding of how people in various rungs of the 1 percent make their money. And some research suggests business income plays a big part. This income is broad-based among the 1 percent. These are talented managers: the researchers find that profits of companies run by these 1 percent-ers are far higher than those of businesses owned by people in the top 5-—10 percent.
To reach the top 0. In the top 0. Heim find that one-fifth of the primary taxpayers in the top 0. The latest data used in this study are from , before the —10 financial crisis altered the landscape. In the rest of the 1 percent, health care is the most represented sector. Since , Forbes has compiled an annual list of the wealthiest Americans, using public information, private interviews, and valuations of comparable assets.
As the rich list comprised households, it represents the top 2. But this small group could control more than a quarter of the income in the 0. Among the group who made the rich list, for almost one in four, finance—especially hedge funds and private equity—was the source of wealth, while 15 percent came from technology-based companies.
Food and beverage companies accounted for 10 percent. And these sectors were on the upswing. On the rich list, two-thirds were self-made and one-third had inherited at least part of their fortune. More than 10 percent were immigrants to the US. Piketty and Saez have theorized that investments grow faster than the economy, giving entrenched dynasties insuperable advantages.
But Kaplan and Rauh argue that the super-rich are predominantly creating rather than inheriting wealth. Kaplan also says that wealth in this group has been fueled by a marriage of in-demand skills, globalization, and technology—the combination of which are allowing businesses to scale up as never before. Skills, say many economists, are critical to the modern economy.
As the US economy grows, jobs are going unfilled as companies scramble to find skilled people to hire. The situation has similarly raised the amount of profits skilled company owners can make, and technology and globalization are further magnifying the value of in-demand skills.
If this is true, the 0. In the Information Age, the change has been particularly pronounced. At every income level up to the 90th percentile, wage earners are now being paid a fraction of what they would have had inequality held constant.
According to Oren Cass, executive director of the conservative think tank American Compass , the median male worker needed 30 weeks of income in to pay for housing, healthcare, transportation, and education for his family. But the counterfactual reveals an even starker picture: In , the combined income of married households with two full-time workers was barely more than what the income of a single-earner household would have earned had inequality held constant.
Two-income families are now working twice the hours to maintain a shrinking share of the pie, while struggling to pay housing, healthcare, education, childcare, and transportations costs that have grown at two to three times the rate of inflation. This dramatic redistribution of income from the majority of workers to those at the very top is so complete that even at the 95th percentile, most workers are still earning less than they would have had inequality held constant. It is only at the 99th percentile that we see incomes growing faster than economic growth: at percent of the rate of per capita GDP.
But even this understates the disparity. This represents a direct transfer of income—and over time, wealth—from the vast majority of working Americans to a handful at the very top. But given the changing demographic composition of the U. The U. It is also far less white and male—with white men falling from over 60 percent of the prime-aged workforce in to less than 45 percent by These changes are important, because while there was far more equality between the income distributions in , there was also more inequality within them—notably in regard to gender and race.
For example, in , the median income of white women was only 31 percent of that of white men; by white women were earning 68 percent as much. Clearly, income disparities between races, and especially between men and women, have narrowed since , and that is a good thing. But unfortunately, much of the narrowing we see is more an artifact of four decades of flat or declining wages for low- and middle-income white men than it is of substantial gains for women and nonwhites.
Much has been made about white male grievance in the age of Trump, and given their falling or stagnant real incomes, one can understand why some white men might feel aggrieved. White, non-urban, non-college educated men have the slowest wage growth in every demographic category.
But to blame their woes on competition from women or minorities would be to completely miss the target. In fact, white men still earn more than white women at all income distributions, and substantially more than most non-white men and women. Only Asian-American men earn higher. Yet there is no moral or practical justification for the persistence of any income disparity based on race or gender.
The counterfactuals in the table above appear vastly unequal because they extrapolate from the indefensible levels of race and gender inequality; they assume that inequality remained constant both between income distributions and within them—that women and nonwhites had not narrowed the income gap with white men.
But surely, this cannot be our goal. That would be the income for all workers at the 50th percentile, regardless of race or gender, had race and gender inequality within distributions been eliminated, and inequality between distributions not grown.
By this measure we can see that in real dollars, women and nonwhites have actually lost more income to rising inequality than white men, because starting from their disadvantaged positions in , they had far more to potentially gain. Per capita GDP grew by percent over the following four decades, so there was plenty of new income to spread around.
Thus, by far the single largest driver of rising inequality these past forty years has been the dramatic rise in inequality between white men. If workers were better educated, this narrative argues, they would earn more money. Problem solved. Indeed, at every income distribution, the education premium has increased since , with the income of college graduates rising faster than their less educated counterparts.
College educated workers are doing better. The reality is that American workers have never been more highly educated. In , only 67 percent of the adult US workforce had a high school education or better, while just 15 percent had earned a four-year college degree.
By , 91 percent of adult workers had completed high school, while the percentage of college graduates in the workforce had more than doubled to 34 percent. In raw numbers, the population of adult workers with a high school education or less has fallen since , while the number of workers with a four-year degree has more than quadrupled.
But below the 90th percentile, even college graduates are falling victim to a decades-long trend of radical inequality that is robbing them of most of the benefits of economic growth.
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