In my earlier post I plotted the percentage of income that comes from capital gains for the Top 0.01 percent. (In 2005 it was 18% if you exclude capital gains when determining the Top 0.01 percent and 51% if you include capital gains when determining the Top 0.01 percent).
In the graphs below, I have plotted the other income sources for Top 0.01% (excluding capital gains when you rank the families). The question I am trying to answer: since most of the income was not from capital gains in the original graph, what are the sources of the unaccounted for income?
{Click on the graph to take a closer look} 
The income data can be found on Emmanuel Saez’s web site.
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality, super rich[/tags]
by Catherine Mulbrandon
in Other
The following two graphs look at the capital gains of high income earners but they need a little explanation. Capital gains are a volatile component of personnel income. For example, depending on what is happening in the stock market capital gains can make up a relatively large or small part of the total income. Also capital gain tend to be realized in a lumpy way. Every year there are families who have a one-time jump in income due to the sale of a house, a business or some other assets like stocks. In these cases the income for those families might qualify them for the Top 1%, Top 0.1%, or Top 0.01% but only for a single year.
When you are choosing which families are members of the high-income “super rich” you have to make a decision whether to include capital gains when you rank the families by personnel income before calculating the share of income that is capital gains. The blue graph excludes capital gains when determining the top 0.01%, the purple graph includes capital gains when determining the top 0.01%
{Click on the graph to take a closer look}
The income data can be found on Emmanuel Saez’s web site.
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality, Capital Gains, super rich[/tags]
by Catherine Mulbrandon
in Other
The New York Times had an income graph in a Mar 29th article that reminded me of the Income/GDP post I made last October. The difference is that I was looking at the share of GDP going to the top 10% as compared to the bottom 90% rather than the share of individual income going to the top 1% and bottom 90%. However, both graphs rely on the IRS data collected by Saez and Piketty. One critique I had about their graphic: by using a different scale for the second graph (the average income for the early 2001-05) it was difficult to compare it to the larger graph. This means the relationship between the two graphs was not very clear.
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality[/tags]
by Catherine Mulbrandon
in Other
The L-curve has an alternative approach to visualizing income distribution using a football field. However, I was inspired by the the video. In it he mentions the importance of investment income for high income earners. While labor income is the way most people make their money. So for my next set of graphs I will be exploring what components make up the income of the highest income brackets.
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality[/tags]
Subscribe via RSS
Subscribe by Email
Visualizing Economics was started in 2006 by 
Follow me on Twitter
My LinkedIn Profile
