NEW YORK TIMES COLUMN: It’s the economic statistic that spawned the Occupy protest movement (“We are the 99 percent”), reshaped President Obama’s domestic program (“middle-class economics”), and most recently led the eternal Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to bemoan that “the rich have gotten richer.”
I am speaking of the income share of the richest 1 percent of American families. Emmanuel Saez, the economics professor who crunches these numbers based on data provided by the Internal Revenue Service, has just released preliminary estimates for 2013. The share of total income (excluding capital gains) going to the top 1 percent remains above one-sixth, at 17.5 percent. By this measure, the concentration of income among the richest Americans remains at levels last seen nearly a century ago.
It is tempting to note that the latest reading is somewhat below the 18.9 percent share that was recorded in 2012. But Professor Saez warns against reading too much into this year-to-year change. The problem is that his estimates rely on tax data, and tax rates on the rich rose sharply in 2013, leading many to shift taxable income out of 2013, and into 2012. Thus, the latest estimate is probably too low, just as the previous year’s number was probably too high… (more)
