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The richest have gotten richer To be exact, it seems to be saying that the richest 500 are x% richer at the end of the year, not that the 500 richest at the be
by krona 9y ago
The richest have gotten richer
To be exact, it seems to be saying that the richest 500 are x% richer at the end of the year, not that the 500 richest at the beginning of the year are %x richer at the end of it. These are two different things because they are two different sets of people.
In decades past the richest and the poorest people don't remain in that part of the income distribution very long; this is especially true in the US.
- bitwize 9y agoActually, it's especially false in the US, because social mobility is so poor for such a "free" state.
- krona 9y agoFrom 2001 to 2007 (just 6 years), the proportion of US households that left their income quintile were (starting at the lowest quintile) 44%, 61%, 58%, 55%, and 34%. Even by global standards that's quite high income mobility.
- addicted 9y agoThe choices of year bounds are interesting to say the least.
- ChrisLomont 9y agoThose changes are about the same for any window of the same time length for all of recent US history. St. Louis FRED has data and papers on this. One of the best studies on intergenerational mobility in the US, using all IRS records (not sure how hard they had to work to get those) shows that mobility in the US has been fairly constant for 50+ years. [1] http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/mobility_trends.pdf http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/mobi...
- pg314 9y ago> These are two different things because they are two different sets of people. The sets mostly overlap. The top 10 of the richest people was the same in 2016 and 2017 [1]. These 10 people saw their net worth increase by $107 billion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires#2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires#201...
- yodsanklai 9y ago> In decades past the richest and the poorest people don't remain in that part of the income distribution very long; this is especially true in the US. I would say this is especially not true in the US where social mobility is notoriously bad. "Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...