> Even after taxes and transfers, there has been close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50% of the distribution since 1980. The aggregate flow of individualized government transfers has increased,but these transfers are largely targeted to the elderly and the middle-class (individuals above the median and below the 90th percentile). Transfers that go to the bottom 50% of earners havenot been large enough to lift their incomes significantly."
> "... our data show a sharp divergence in the growth experienced by the bottom 50% versus the rest of the economy. The average pretax income of the bottom 50% of adults has stagnated at about $16,000 per adult (in constant 2014 dollars ...) . As a result, the bottom 50% income share has collapsed from about 20% in 1980 to 12% in 2014. In the meantime, the average pretax income of top 1% adults rose from $420,000 to about $1.3 million, and their income share increased from about 12% in the early 1980s to 20% in 2014. The two groups have essentially switched their income shares, with eight points of national income transferred from the bottom 50% to the top 1%. The top 1% income share is now almost twice as large as the bottom 50% share, a group that is by definition 50 times more numerous. In 1980, top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults before tax, while they earn 81 times more today. Second, government redistribution has offset only a smallfraction of the increase in pretax inequality."