Wealth Inequality by the Numbers

Not since the Gilded Age has this country seen such a yawning gap between the very rich and those with little wealth. Wealth concentration has spiked since the 1970s: whereas in 1971, the top 1% of households held less than 20% of total household wealth, by 1998 the top percent owned 38%. According to the most recent Survey of Consumer Finances, the bottom 50% of the U.S. population claimed just 2.8% of total private wealth in 2001, while the top 5% held 58%.

The racial wealth gap persists (it far exceeds the racial income gap), evidence of the country’s long legacy of discrimination. Data show that African-American wealth holdings actually fell during the boom years of the 1990s, even while the black-white income gap closed a bit.

Few other periods have reached such extremes of wealth inequality. Those that have include the Gilded Age and the years preceding the Great Depression. Inequalities not only undermine opportunity—they fuel economic and political instability.

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2004/0104inequality.pdf