Stats on historical wealth inequality in America

November 30, 2021 8:22 PM

Hi, I'm looking for mention in Jill Lepore's These Truths where she talks about something along the lines of at one point in American history basically five rich men owned more wealth than half of the states. I've been looking in the Post War and Gilded Age chapters 1865-1918, but I can't find any mention of it. Help?
posted by ABlanca to Education (2 answers total)

Best answer: Here's an Atlantic article that might help, and maybe even lead to the citation
posted by dum spiro spero at 9:47 PM on November 30, 2021

Reading that article, the big thing that stands out to me is this: "By the time the Civil War came, the top 1 percent of U.S. households laid claim to 10 percent of the nation's income, versus about 7 percent during the founders' era. Today, the same group accounts for about 19 percent.*"

You can see the effects of compounding, generational wealth, and inheritance, and mobility (ie: the same guy can own everything in California and everything in New York, which for most of history are pretty far apart, but now is a phone call or short flight away).

And you can see they really haven't shifted very much from the graphs. You can also see it was rising in the 1860 period, so by the early 1900s (ie: before FDR and the New Deal) it could very well have been even higher.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:00 PM on December 1, 2021