Exploring Income Inequality, Part 3: Widening Inequality Since the 1970s
http://www.offthechartsblog.org/exploring-income-inequality-part-3-widening-inequality-since-the-1970s/
Posted by: Hannah Shaw
Posted in: Income Inequality, Poverty and Income, Trends
Yesterday’s post showed that the era of shared prosperity ended in the 1970s and highlighted the widening of income inequality since then. Today, we’ll take a look at what has happened to income since 1979, using the comprehensive data in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) recent report on inequality.
As the slideshow below shows, average after-tax incomes for households in the top 1 percent of the distribution nearly quadrupled between 1979 and 2007, after adjusting for inflation. That compares with increases of about 40 percent for the middle three-fifths of the distribution and just 18 percent for the bottom fifth.
The CBO data shown here reflect a more comprehensive income definition than the Census data that we showed yesterday. As we explain in our guide, CBO uses a broader measure of income than either Census or tax return data alone can capture.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a closer look at incomes over the 1979-2007 period.
More About Hannah Shaw
Hannah Shaw joined the Center in August of 2008. Her work as a research associate centers on income inequality, unemployment insurance, and economic analysis of other federal budget and policy issues.
Full bio | Blog Archive | Research archive at CBPP.org
