Illustrating Income Inequality: A Recap

Our blog series last week, Illustrating Income Inequality, showed in three animated graphs how most of the income growth in recent decades has occurred at the very top.

The first post illustrated the fact that after a period of shared prosperity in the early postwar decades, income disparities widened substantially beginning in the 1970s.

The second post explained that income gains since 1979 at the very top have far outpaced those for everyone else.

Finally, the third post showed how the top 1 percent’s share of total income is approaching highs not seen since the 1920s.

You can find more of the data and a fuller explanation behind these trends in our primer, “A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality