Chart of the day

Here’s another of my charts—this one for the composition of income of the top 1 percent—from the latest data on inequality in the United States created and disseminated by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.

This chart shows the sources of the income going to the top 1 percent—basically, the various ways the members of the top 1 percent are able to capture a share of the economy-wide surplus: in the form of wages (defined as wages and salaries and pensions), profits (profits from S-Corporations, Partnerships, and sole proprietorship businesses plus farm income), dividends, interest, and rents.

So, for example, in 2015, the top 1 percent received their portion of the surplus as wages (53.7 percent), profits (32.3 percent), dividends (8.6 percent), interest (3.2 percent), and rents (2.2 percent).*

I’ve included the actual data below.

The previous charts are here and here. As always, readers should feel free to use this chart and reproduce it as they wish.

	Wages	Profits	Dividends	Interest	Rents
1979	59.0	17.0	12.5	8.0	3.5
1980	60.5	13.3	12.5	10.0	3.6
1981	62.7	7.8	12.4	13.3	3.7
1982	62.6	8.2	12.3	12.9	3.9
1983	65.5	9.8	11.0	10.7	3.0
1984	66.1	9.9	8.9	12.4	2.7
1985	63.6	11.0	9.6	12.3	3.4
1986	65.7	11.1	10.8	10.6	1.7
1987	63.9	17.2	7.2	10.4	1.4
1988	59.8	21.2	7.6	10.0	1.5
1989	56.7	22.3	7.4	11.8	1.8
1990	57.9	22.3	6.8	11.1	2.0
1991	57.4	23.0	6.6	11.0	2.1
1992	61.6	23.6	5.4	7.1	2.3
1993	62.1	23.8	5.3	6.2	2.6
1994	59.1	26.8	5.3	6.1	2.7
1995	59.2	27.3	5.1	5.9	2.4
1996	59.7	27.0	5.2	5.7	2.4
1997	60.3	26.7	5.1	5.4	2.5
1998	61.1	26.6	4.7	5.2	2.4
1999	62.1	26.1	4.7	4.8	2.3
2000	63.0	24.7	5.0	5.1	2.2
2001	61.7	26.5	4.2	5.1	2.5
2002	61.2	27.4	4.2	4.6	2.7
2003	60.2	27.7	5.2	4.2	2.8
2004	58.4	28.4	6.5	4.1	2.6
2005	54.8	30.9	6.6	5.2	2.6
2006	53.5	30.1	7.4	6.7	2.4
2007	54.3	27.7	8.4	7.5	2.3
2008	55.7	28.3	7.5	5.6	2.9
2009	56.4	30.7	6.0	4.4	2.6
2010	57.2	29.2	7.0	4.0	2.6
2011	58.4	29.0	6.4	3.5	2.7
2012	54.9	30.0	9.2	3.2	2.8
2013	56.7	30.6	6.7	3.1	3.0
2014	55.1	31.2	7.7	2.8	3.3
2015	53.7	32.3	8.6	3.2	2.2

 

*These are the wages that distort the usual calculations of the profit-wage ratio (as I explained here and here). To obtain a more accurate sense of capital and labor shares, the wages of the 1 percent should be subtracted from the labor share and added to the capital share.