Income Inequality: Democratic vs Republican Administrations

by Catherine Mulbrandon on April 27, 2008

Found the top graph via Paul Krugman’s blog. It is from a paper by Larry Bartels, professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}
IRS Top 400 magnifying glass

I found a second graph in the same paper, showing the income inequality year to year (the 80/20 ratio measures the income inequality by dividing the income earned by someone at the 80th percentile by someone at the 20th percentile). Additionally, Bartels has highlighted the years Democrats and Republicans held the White House. Like a number of graphs on my site, you can see the increase in income inequality since the early 70s.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}
IRS Top 400 magnifying glass

Data in the graphs are calculated from the Historical Income Inequality Tables compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Addendum

5/2/08 Fix my definition of 80/20 income ratio

[tags]income, United States, inequality, Bartels[/tags]

Tagged as: Blog, Distribution of Income, Income - Growth, IRS, Line Graph, United States, US Census

  • http:thetechrecruiter.com crystal

    I like the way you think. I’m going to tell some of my friends on the left about your website.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UQVPVWN4AHGBIHIVCF4RTMU36A Brigham A

    The practices and ideology of both parties has changed
    dramatically during this time table making this paper impractical outside of a macro
    view although it is interesting. The fact a group is dem or rep is sort of
    generic. In addition, Dem/Rep income is calculated by average per capita income
    for red and blue states not on actual voter data. There are no county factors
    and there are no factors for how blue or how red a state is; also rendering
    this information impractical. Blue states are generally larger population, higher
    cost of living states besides and there is no consideration for expendable
    income percentages compared to gross income percentages. I would hypothesize that
    this information simply indicates the developing of the mid/west and the purpling
    of the country. I’d like to see the population changes for this same time
    frame. Perhaps the red states are just procreating greedy little gop babies
    faster?

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