The Rich Are Getting Richer; So Are the Poor. Jarrett Skorup

“No matter your thoughts about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protesters are right in at least one respect: The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.”

Variations on this statement have been repeated in dozens of blogs, commentaries and even news reports over the past several weeks. The claim comes via a Congressional Budget Office analysis showing that incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, while the lowest 20 percent saw their inflation-adjusted incomes grow by “only” 18 percent.

The numbers from the report are correct, but the assertions based on it are true only because of careful wording. While the “top 1 percent” had the highest growth of income, if broadened to include the top 20 percent (the usual way of analyzing such figures), the growth rate was a far less stratospheric 65 percent. This contrasts with about 40 percent growth for the middle three-fifths of all wage earners, and 18 percent for the lowest one-fifth.

Read full in Mackinac Center.