What does Top 1%, Top 0.1%, Top 0.01% mean?

by Catherine Mulbrandon

My mother pointed out that I never clearly defined what I meant by Top 1%, Top 0.1% and Top 0.01%. So returning to the Excel file posted on the web site of Emmanuel Saez (Professor of Economics at Berkeley):

In 2004, you would have needed an income of at least:

$250,995 to make the top 1%
$837,892 to make the top 0.1%
$3,642,236 to make the top 0.01%

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Tagged as: Income - High, Pitketty & Saez, United States

Fr.

The keyword should read “Piketty & Saez”
Anonymous

Does this mean 1/100 people makes $250K +? 1/1000 makes $837k +? Thats pretty interesting if you look at your high school with maybe 2000 kids. There would be 20 growing up to make $250k+, 2 growing up to make $837k+? Am I correct or have I misunderstood these numbers?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Josiah-Perillo/826215611 Josiah Perillo

Hi Catherine, great site and wonderful infographics. I had the same point as your mother but eventually found half of my answer here on this page. I think the second important part is to define Top Marginal Tax Rate in both real dollars and adjusted for inflation over time. That way you could see what the top 1%, 0.1% and 0.01% means in realtion to the Top Marginal Tax Rate over time (i.e. in the 50′s & 60′s the Top Marginal Tax Rate was 90% but who did that apply to 1%, 0.1% or 0.01% and what is that in today’s dollars?).