It depends on which time frame you are looking at things from. From the perspective of the last 50 years, the rich are getting richer. From the perspective of the last 100 years, we're approaching a similar distribution of wealth that we had in the 1920's. From the last recorded year, the rich are relatively getting poorer, believe it or not, but that's because 2006 was a peak, and 2007 had somewhat more equal income earned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

Here is a chart of the Gini index from WWII on of various countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_since_WWII.gif

The gini index is a means of measuring the level of income inequality between the richest and poorest people. It is *not* a measure of wealth, but income... The wikipedia link includes a means to calculate the index.

Basically, a gini coefficient of 1 would mean that all *income* in a country would belong to one person, and a coefficient of 0 means that everyone gets the same amount of income.

Due to the recent banking crisis, and massive stock market dive, the rich most certainly got a lot poorer this year than the rest of us did, but it won't affect the gini coefficent as much, because that isn't earned income, but gained income.

Now, I couldn't find a chart that shows the distribution of wealth when factoring in for earned AND gained income - gained income is essentially investment income. Poorer people have proportionally less money to invest, so rich people gain a significant proportion of their income (as opposed to earning it). It would show a greater gap in wealth, and it would show an accelerated pace of this from the 80s on, with a more noticeable dip for the 1990 and 2001/2 recessions, the latter having a comparatively larger dip compared to the depth of the recession.
Permalink | Report