[lbo-talk] Wage Inequality peaks at near 2007 level in 2010

Thomas Volscho Thomas.Volscho at csi.cuny.edu
Sat Oct 22 18:29:09 PDT 2011


Here's some Academic PR Newswire, :)

(Social Security Admin) just released income distribution from W-2 for 2010. 81 dudes made $50 million + in wages, tips, deferred compensation, etc. in 2010.

The Gini index is a measure of inequality (see my calculation below)...higher values indicate more inequality, lower values indicate more equality. 2010 reaches 0.549 (virtually identical to the 0.550 of 2007). So the 3 peaks are 2000, 2007, and 2010 (all are close to financial market peak: stocks, real estate, annually speaking). These figures also speak to the volatility in Frank Rich's WSJ article. They may fall out of the top 1% of income but not likely far (and such falling is even less so for the wealth distribution).

Year

Gini

1990

0.516

1991

0.514

1992

0.521

1993

0.523

1994

0.523

1995

0.525

1996

0.528

1997

0.531

1998

0.533

1999

0.536

2000

0.541

2001

0.535

2002

0.532

2003

0.534

2004

0.538

2005

0.542

2006

0.545

2007

0.550

2008

0.545

2009

0.542

2010

0.549

Thomas W. Volscho Assistant Professor of Sociology Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work City University of New York-College of Staten Island 2800 Victory Blvd., Bldg. 4S, Room 210 Staten Island, NY 10314

phone: 718-982-3781 email: thomas.volscho at csi.cuny.edu<mailto:thomas.volscho at csi.cuny.edu> web: http://scholar.library.csi.cuny.edu/~volschot

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