The Top 0.01% and Top 1%'s Income Share: 2008

This one of the graphics that I presented recently at The Big Picture conference here in New York City. It is from a project I am currently working on called An Illustrated Guide to Income in the United States: a collection of infographics, maps and charts looking at the different incomes and occupations in the United States.

Recently the conversation in the news has been about the top 1%, however, in this graphic I show the breakdown of personal income by different percentiles, including the top 0.01% (i.e. income above $9 million). I have used 10,000 "people" to represent the tax returns filed in 2008, each "person" one equals 15,246 tax units. (A tax unit is single adult or married couple living together, including their dependents.)

So the top 1% are represented by the 100 "people" in the four (orange, yellow, magenta & red) rectangles the upper left corner.

Approximately $8.2 trillion in personal income (including capital gains) was reported to the IRS in 2008. Divide that by 152 million tax units you get an average income of $54,315. I have the size of the "people" represent the average income for each percentile group. For example the Average Income for the Top 0.01% = $27 million.

Data is from Saez and Piketty research which is now available at the The World Top Incomes Database 

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Income Gap and Marginal Tax Rate 1917-2006

From the Nation. The top graph shows the average income of the top o.o1% compared to the bottom 90%. The higher the peak the bigger the gap between the two groups. In 2006 you would need an income of over $10 million to make it into the top 0.01% while your income would have to be less than $100,000 to be in the bottom 90. The second graph shows the marginal tax rate over the same time period. Here is graph I created plotting similar data. {Click on the image to take a closer look}

[tags]Income Inequality, United States, Marginal Tax Rate[/tags]

Average Income: PreTax vs AfterTax 2005

I created this graph showing the average income for different household percentiles, comparing pretax income and aftertax income. The minimum income threshold for each percentile is noted in the graph. {Click on the image to take a closer look}

Data from Congressional Budget Office

[tags]United States, Income tax, average income[/tags]