I'd not gotten around to doing the math myself, but this blog post, from Chad Stone of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides it. In 2007, the top 10% of families had 71.5% of the net worth.
Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | If You Think Income Inequality Is High, You Should See Wealth Inequality. June 14, 2012 at 11:54 am
This week, the Federal Reserve made headlines for something other than monetary policy when it released its latest statistics on family income and wealth. The headline finding: U.S. families’ wealth dropped sharply between 2007 and 2010, especially among middle-class homeowners. In my latest post for US News & World Report, I dug into the Fed’s data to see what they show about the distribution of income and wealth.
No surprise: wealth (the stock of assets like savings, stocks, vehicles, homes, business and financial assets less debt like mortgages and credit card debt) is much more highly concentrated than income (the flow of money coming in over the course of the year from earnings, dividends and interest, Social Security, and so on). We don’t yet have statistics on the top 1 percent from the Fed data, but as I report in the US News post:
[T]he published numbers already point to how much more concentrated wealth is than income (as it has been since these data have been collected). As the chart shows,
This week, the Federal Reserve made headlines for something other than monetary policy when it released its latest statistics on family income and wealth. The headline finding: U.S. families’ wealth dropped sharply between 2007 and 2010, especially among middle-class homeowners. In my latest post for US News & World Report, I dug into the Fed’s data to see what they show about the distribution of income and wealth.
No surprise: wealth (the stock of assets like savings, stocks, vehicles, homes, business and financial assets less debt like mortgages and credit card debt) is much more highly concentrated than income (the flow of money coming in over the course of the year from earnings, dividends and interest, Social Security, and so on). We don’t yet have statistics on the top 1 percent from the Fed data, but as I report in the US News post:
[T]he published numbers already point to how much more concentrated wealth is than income (as it has been since these data have been collected). As the chart shows,
- 45 percent of before-tax income goes to the top 10 percent of families ranked by income.
- An astounding 75 percent of wealth goes to the top 10 percent of families ranked by wealth.
LVTfan here:
Does this produce in the reader any curiosity about the structures that have created this outcome, or what policy changes are necessary to correct those structures?
I'm willing to bet that few at CBPP know what readers of LVTfan's blog know on the subject.
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