It wasn’t always this way. The bulk of income growth in America has gone to the top 10 percent of families, but that was not always the case. Throughout most of the 20th century, the bottom 90 percent claimed a much larger share of income growth than in recent years. The chart, from the Economic Policy Institute’s new interactive State of Working America website, compares the distribution of income growth over two periods. Between 1948 and 1979, a period of strong overall economic growth and productivity in the United States, the richest 10 percent of families accounted for 33 percent of average income growth, while the bottom 90 percent accounted for 67 percent. The overall distribution of income was stable for these three decades. In an extreme contrast, during the most recent economic expansion between 2000 and 2007, the period that led up to the Great Recession, the richest 10 percent accounted for a full 100 percent of average income growth.
