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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A look at the relationship between occupation and income. From a poster I created in 2004.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}

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I went back to my 2005 US Income Distribution graph but this time I looked at the income of everyone above $250,000. Although one can find lists of high income earners it is very difficult to find a graph plotting their earnings as compared to everyone else. The scale of the graph is so extreme that most of the population ends up looking like a dot at the bottom of the graph.

Below I have created 3 graphs that try to show the relationship between the bottom 99.99% and the top 0.01%.

{Click on each graph to take a closer look}

The original Census data can be found at Table HINC-06. Income Distribution to $250,000 or More for Households

The bottom 99.99% I estimated from data found at Emmanuel Saez’s web site

The CEO and Celebrity income estimates came from Forbes magazine

And finally the income for the top hedge fund managers was first published at Alpha magazine but I found it via the New York Times

See Also: Part 1 and Part 2
[tags]US Income Distribution, High Income, Census Income, Income Inequality [/tags]

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I went back to my 2005 US Income Distribution graph and changed the scale to match the logarithmic scale used in Gapminder’s World income distribution 2003 graph which shows the historical income distribution from 1970-2000 for selected countries.

{Click on the graph to take a closer look}

See Also: Part 1 and Part 3

[tags]US Income Distribution, Gapminder, World Income, Census Income Distribution[/tags]

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More Census data! This time it is the U.S. income distribution for 2005 showing the number of households up to $250,000. (I have since added more graphs that include incomes above $250,000: 2005 US Income Distribution Part 2 and 2005 US Income Distribution Part 3)

{Click on the graph to take a closer look}

While the original Census data can be found in U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Table HINC-06. Income Distribution to $250,000 or More for Households I needed to calculate the number of households in $10,000 increments for this graph. (That calculation can be found here: Census household income distribution. Besides the income distribution for 2005, I added 2004 as a bonus. It can be viewed by anyone with a Google Account.)
See Also: 2005 US Income Distribution Part 2 and 2005 US Income Distribution Part 3 for graphs of the rich and super rich. And United States’ Average Income since 1913 both with and without capital gains.
Addendum:
11/19/2006 Added upper limits of income quintiles and the median from Table H-1. Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households
[tags]US Income Distribution, Income Distribution, Census Income Distribution[/tags]

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