If you feel you’re falling behind in the income race, it’s not just your imagination. The wealth gap between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent in the United States is as wide as it’s been in nearly 100 years, a new study finds.
For starters, between 1993 and 2012, the real incomes of the 1 percent grew 86.1 percent, while those of the 99 percent grew 6.6 percent, according to the study, based on Internal Revenue Service statistics examined by economists at UC Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.
The Great Recession hit the top 1 percent harder than other income groups, but the wealthy recovered quicker too.
