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Comment by alayne | Hacker News Reader

You have to be worth something like $8 million to be in the top 1% in the U.S. by net worth. I don't think that includes most dentists.

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Dentists can most definitely make far more than that in a career. I have 2 brothers that are dentists. One of them had a practice in Hattiesburg, MS (about 47,000 people) and in the city of Bay Springs, MS (about 2,000 people) and he was making anywhere from $600,000/year on the low end, to $1m on the best years.

Before he got divorced and moved to Florida, anyways, and the glut of dentists there has him making around $250,000/year max so far (lived there about 4-5 years now.)

He's planning to retire when he is 50 and he's 44 now. He got his pilots license in the last few years and now flies between his practices in Florida and owns his own plane (just a small little Beechcraft Bonanza.)

But either way, he's made great money in his lifetime through dentistry. Unfortunately my other brother that is a dentist I don't talk to that much so I have no idea of his earnings, but I know he also does very well.

Most dentists aren't making $600k per year.

I just think OP was being a little bit generous with who is in the 1%, particularly if you look at net worth which is a better metric.

This report is about top 1% of income, not wealth.

To be in the top 1% nationally, you had to have earned $383,000 in 2015.

In some cities that number is as low as $175K, very doable for a doctor or dentist.

Yep and I don't think that is a good measurement.

Of course, some of that is cost of living, but a lot of it is the lack of diversity in the ratings.

I'm sure Elko, Nevada has some doctors, but probably not many investment bankers. With less representation from other well-remunerated occupations, a doctor in Elko is likely to be in the top 1%; however, a similar doctor in Manhattan probably isn't.

That $383K is very likely a household income (or tax return AGI, which is a close proxy for household) figure, not an individual income figure.

Yes, it's household income, not individual.

I always understood it to be top 1% of income.

Asset wealth may make more sense.

I think your numbers might be off because the most I've seen for the 1% cutoff is 500-600k

I got the 8 million from here http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-t...

Feel free to cite a better source.

Interesting, like 'rashkov' that's much higher than I would have guessed. It does look authoritative, although part of the disparity may be that the "administrative" estimates of wealth are much less than other presumably more accurate measures.

This paper gives a more up to date chart on P. 62 in Table C.3: http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/20...

  Table C.3. Net Worth Fractile Thresholds (Thousands $)
  SCF Bulletin Wealth, HHDs 
                      1989   1992   1995   1998   2001   2004    2007   2010   2013
  90th Percentile      364    357    381    494    740    834     910    953    942
  99th Percentile    2,251  2,318  2,460  3,793  5,787  6,356   8,360  6,815  8,155
  99.9th Percentile  9,703  9,207 13,898 15,346 20,338 25,109  30,826 27,488 30,894

I chose the top line for each percentile, which gives the highest figures, but it's possible that one of the "adjusted" numbers is more appropriate. It's interesting to me that over the time period from 1989 to 2013, the 90th, 99th, and 99.9th percentiles have all basically tripled.

The summary, in case the chart is hard to read, is that for 2013, the 90th percentile threshold for household wealth is about 1 million dollars, the 99th is about 8 million, and the 99.9th is about 30 million. The adjusted estimates (see the paper) are generally 10-30% lower.

A quick Google suggest that Dentist make 120k+ per year. Over a lifetime of a career that works out to roughly 5 million dollars of earning potential (Assuming you retire at 65 and never receive a raise.) Assuming you have a spouse that works as well you could pretty handily be in the top 1% as a dentist.

doesn't the dentist need to eat and a place to live? taxes?

No one gets to save 100% of their income from their entire life.

You're assuming dentists don't invest. In the independent film business one of the secrets to finding funding was to find a bunch of dentists.

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