A column by Neil Irwin at the NYTimes had some stunning charts and figures from recent work by economist Pavlina R. Tcherneva on where income gains went in this society in recent years. (Go ahead, take a wild guess!) Here are some of the relevant paragraphs but go to the piece yourself and look at the remarkable charts. Tom Back in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, most of the income gains experienced during expansions — the periods from the trough of one recession until the onset of another — accrued to most of the people. That is to say, the bottom 90 percent of earners captured at least a majority of the rise in income. With each expansion in sequence, however, the bottom 90 percent captured a smaller share of income gains and the top 10 percent captured more. Fast-forward to the 1990s and early 2000s expansions, and a new pattern emerged, with the huge majority of income gains going to the top 10 percent, leaving pocket change for everybody else. From 2001 to 2007, 98 percent of income gains accrued to the top 10 percent of earners, Ms. Tcherneva found, basing her analysis on data from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the academics who have made a speciality in documenting the rise of income inequality around the world. (As a point of reference, an American needed a 2011 adjusted gross income of $120,136 to be in the top 10 percent of earners that year, according to I.R.S. data.) Which brings us to the current expansion. Ms. Tcherneva’s data goes only through 2012, so perhaps in the two years since then things have gotten a bit better for most workers. But in the first three years of the current expansion, incomes actually fell for the bottom 90 percent of earners, even as they rose nicely for the top 10 percent. The result: The top 10 percent captured an impossible-seeming 116 percent of income gains during that span... One percent of the population, in the first three years of the current expansion, took home 95 percent of the income gains. nytimes/2014/09/27/upshot/the-benefits-of-economic-expansions-are-increasingly-going-to-the-richest-americans.html?abt=0002&abg=1
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 18:30:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015