Where Do the Rich and Poor Live?

One of the most popular maps I have on my site I got from a site called Social Explorer. It is about the 2000 poverty rates across the US. For my Illustrated Guide to Income in the United States, I created an new map using data through 2010 and a "divergent" color scheme which sets the light gray midpoint at the national poverty rate of 14%. Red are counties with a higher rate of poverty than the national rate while blue counties have a lower rate.

I also looked at the households with more than $200,000 a year and mapped where they are clustered. (BTW, if you want to see the voting patterns of high-income counties  and find out if the wealthy counties voted for Obama or Romney check out a map I created for Design & Geography). 

Data is from the US Census Bureau, American Community Survey.

Highest Paying Jobs in the US: 2005

While athletes, movie stars and other celebrities can earn very high incomes, the majority (61%) of very high-income people (> $1,246,000) work as corporate executives or in the finance industry. When you account for all taxpayers with income greater than 1.2 million a year, the list includes: Lawyers; Medical jobs; Real estate jobs; Entrepreneurs; Business operations; Computer, math, engineering, technical jobs; Skilled sales; Professors and scientists; Farmers & ranchers

Data source: Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data (pdf)

Where are the billionaires?

Found via FastCoDesign Each circle represents a billionaire but when appropriate the company that they associated with is labeled. And of course United States leads the way with number of billionaires. I liked seeing the data presented on a map; having a geographic distribution shows off the number of non-US billionaires. It would have been nice to see their net worth included in the infographic.

Income of the Superrich in 2005

ADDED NEW VERSION 2/10/2009 Recently the CBO published a supplement to their Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2005 report to include a breakdown of top 1% into smaller percentiles. I took the data for income and created this visualization. It is comparing the minimum income for each percentile to the average income in that percentile.

UPDATED VERSION {Click on the image to take a closer look}

ORIGINAL VERSION {Click on the image to take a closer look}

Data from Congressional Budget Office

[tags]United States, High Income[/tags]

Top 400 Taxpayers: Sources of Income 1992-2005

This graph shows the different types of income of the "Top 400" from 1992-2005. Number one source of income is Capital Gains, which accounts for more than 50% of their income in 2005. The "Top 400" are the 400 tax returns with the highest adjusted gross income reported to the IRS.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}

Data from the IRS via Wall Street Journal's Tax Report

[tags]Tax Rates, United States, Income tax, IRS[/tags]

Top 400 Taxpayers: Income and Taxes Paid 1992-2005

This graph shows the average income reported to the IRS and the average taxes paid by the top 400, i.e. the 400 taxes returns with the highest adjusted gross income from 1992-2005. This does not represent not gains in the wealth of people like Bill Gates but instead shows the annual income of the superrich reported to the IRS. They accounted for 1.15% of total income reported in 2005, more than twice as large as their 0.49% share in 1995. {Click on the image to take a closer look}

Data from the IRS via Wall Street Journal's Tax Report

[tags]Tax Rates, United States, Income tax, IRS[/tags]

Annual income of three billion dollars?

Reading the Wealth Report I stumbled across The $3 Billion Payday

...hedge-funder John Paulson, who made somewhere between $3 billion and $4 billion last year. That’s right, between $3 billion and $4 billion. In one year.To put that in perspective, Mr. Paulson’s salary equals the incomes of 62,500 Americans earning the national median income of $48,000 a year. It also puts him instantly among the top 150 richest Americans, as measured by Forbes. Mr. Paulson made more in one year than The Donald has made in a lifetime.

I have tried to graph hedge fund manager income in the past but it is difficult to compare income of $50,000 with $3 billion on the same graph. Alternatively, I have compared CEO and hedge fund managers.

Historical Tax Rates by Income Group [NYTimes]

A recent NY Times article included a graph showing the amount of taxes paid to the federal government based on income groups. While I like the graph it does not explain what the income thresholds are for each income group. However, I was able to pull out of the original journal article that the average income for the highest earning 0.01% was $18,113,612.

See also: What does Top 1%, Top 0.1%, Top 0.01% mean? 2005 US Income Distribution part 3

[tags]NYTimes, Taxes, income inequality, wealth, income distribution, superrich[/tags]

TheOnion: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

In The Know: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

Although this is a a brilliant parody from the Onion, the premise is true.

If you take look at this graph of the top 5% (comparing the top 1% to the next 4%) and this graph of Top 1% (comparing the top 0.1%, the next 0.4%, to the lower 0.5%), you can see how the richer you are the more your share of the total income in the US has increased since the 1970s.

[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality, onion, superrich[/tags]

Where do Britain's rich and poor live?

Here are two maps showing Britain's wealthiest and poorest households. (Unlike some of the previous maps I have posted about the US, this map of the UK relies on assets rather than income to determine who is rich and who is poor). I found this via the BBC from a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study: Poverty and wealth across Britain 1968 to 2005 Unlike the US, there seems to be very little rural poverty in the UK.

See also: United States Poverty Map United States Household Income Map [tags]BBC, Britain, UK, Wealth, Poverty[/tags]