Get wealthy to get wealthier yet

Few days ago while scanning through the morning news I came across an article in Le Temps. The article was discussing the increasing income inequalities in the US and presented the data as a nice graph. The graph referenced the (previously unknown to me) site The World Top Income Database.

After an (unsuccessful) attempt to contain my curiosity , I decided to try out the database for myself and plotted the following nice graphs using the web-sites practical Graphics interface.

Fig 1: Comparison of the income share of the super-rich.

Fig 2: Income shares of rich (r.), super-rich (b.), and super-super-rich (g.).

Fig 3: Average incomes of rich, super-rich, and super-super-rich.

The conclusions we can draw from the graphs above are quite remarkable. First of all, while the share of the total income of the super-rich (top 1%) seems to be quite stable in France and Japan, it seems to follow a different "law" in English speaking Australia and the US. The growth of the income of the super-rich seems to be the most accentuated in the US, where since 1986 it has been growing larger within the income pie.

From the Fig. 2 and 3 we can draw more conclusions. While the incomes of the rich (top 10%) are growing steadily, the incomes of the super-rich are growing even faster. According to Le Temps article, although during 1990s economic expansion (significant) 45% of total growth in income was captured by the super-rich, during the presidency of George Bush (2002-2007) this number rose to a whopping 65%. On top of that the super-super-rich (top 0.1%) have been doing better yet. Between 1990-2005 they claimed 2% of the 2.3% increase in the total share of the super-rich.

Well, to conclude I cite the quote from the article attributed to Ernest Hemingway:

The super-rich are very different from the rich. They have even more money.

Have a great Friday!