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High Society: The History of America's Upper Class, (Assouline, 2008) ISBN 2759402886; Fraser, Steve and Gary Gerstle, eds. Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, Harvard UP, 2005, ISBN 0-674-01747-1; Ghent, Jocelyn Maynard, and Frederic Cople Jaher. "The Chicago Business Elite: 1830–1930. A Collective Biography."
Income inequality contributes to wealth inequality. For example, economist Emmanuel Saez wrote in June 2016 that the top 1% of families captured 52% of the total real income (GDP) growth per family from 2009 to 2015. From 2009 to 2012, the top 1% captured 91% of the income gains. [77] Nepotism perpetuates and increases wealth inequality ...
After the Great Recession which started in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 34.6% to 37.1%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 85% to 87.7%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36.1% in median household wealth but a drop of only 11.1% for the top 1%. [55] [53]
According to the book Who Rules America? by William Domhoff, the distribution of wealth in America is the primary highlight of the influence of the upper class. The top 1% of Americans own around 34% of the wealth in the U.S. while the bottom 80% own only approximately 16% of the wealth.
The two charts in this section show the average net worth of individuals in the top 1%, top 10%, 50th to 90th percentile, and bottom half of the population from 1962 to 2021. As of 2021, the average person in the top 10% is a HNWI, while the average person in the top 1% is a VHNWI.
Nearly half the top 1% by income were also in the top 1% by wealth. [278] In 2010, the wealthiest 5% of households owned approximately 72% of financial wealth, while the bottom 80% of households had 5%. [279] The top 1% controlled 38.6% of the country's wealth in 2016. [280] Much of the wealth gain came to those in the top 1%.
In 2022, families in America's top 10% held 60% of all wealth, up from 56% in 1989. Families in the top 1% held 23% of the nation's wealth in 1989, which has now grown to 27%.
As of the second quarter 2024, the average American household had wealth of $1.17 million. The average wealth of households in the top 1 percent was about $35.5 million. In the top 0.1 percent ...