For Immediate Release: Thursday, October 27, 2011
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Three-fifths of all income growth from 1979-2007 went to the top 1%

Income gains in the United States have become very concentrated in recent decades. Today’s Snapshot explains that the top 1 percent of income-earning households captured nearly 60 percent of all income gains, while the bottom 90 percent captured less than 9 percent of all income gains over this same period between 1979 and 2007.  This means that the bottom 90 percent were able to claim just one-quarter of what the top 0.1 percent of households gained (36 percent) over that 28-year period.