The wealthiest 1% of all Americans saw their income reach a record high. At the same time, income of the rest 99% of households also increased.
According to an analysis based on Internal Revenue Service data, the bottom 99% of income earners in the United States had the real income growth at 3.9% in 2015 compared to 2014, the highest level since 1998. Meanwhile, incomes for top 1% grew by 7.7%.
After a sharp decline of 11.6% in the period of 2007 to 2009, real incomes of the bottom 99% of families rose by 1.1% from 2009 to 2013, and then increased by 6% from 2013 to 2015.
Since then, the bottom 99% has recovered only about 60% of their income losses, in contrast to the wealthiest 1%.
The top 10% of income earners making an average of around $300,000 annually saw their share of income increase to 50.5% in 2015 from 50% in 2014. That is the highest level of income inequality since 2012. Meanwhile, the share of income of the top 1% of families earning over $1.4 million a year increased to 22% in 2015 from 21.4% in 2014.
Thus, the top 1% of families accounted for 52% of total real income growth per family from 2009 to 2015, while the bottom 99% of families had 48% of total real income growth. Such an uneven recovery is going along with a long-term increase in financial inequality since 1980, when the top 1% of households began to account for a disproportionate share of economic growth.
Experts say that reforms which came into effect in 2013 did little to reduce income inequality. There was a fall in incomes of the top 1% of families before the introduction of higher tax rates, however the super-wealthy compensated for this decline last year.
