From Carpe Diem Monday Night Links
Looking at household income instead of average wages, the chart above paints a much different picture of an America with rising incomes for many American households and lots of upward income mobility, using recently updated Census Bureau data through 2014 available here. In 1967, nearly six of every ten US households earned $50,000 per year or less (in 2014 dollars), about one in three earned $50,000 to $100,000 per year and only about one in eight households earned $100,000 per year or more. By last year, fewer than half of US households earned less than $50,000 per year, 28.5% earned $50,000 to $100,000, and most remarkably about one in four American households now earn $100,000 or more. Or stated differently, the share of American households earning $100,000 or more per year increased more than three-fold from 8.1% in 1967 to 24.7% in 2014. If the 8.1% percentage in 1967 hadn’t increased over time, there would only be about 10 million households today earning $100,000 or more, instead of the actual number of nearly 31 million households in that income category. Thanks to America’s economic dynamism and upward mobility, there are more than 20 million American households earning more than $100,000 annually compared to a static economy with limited opportunities for upward mobility and rising incomes that would have been reflected in maintaining the 8.1% share of high-income households that prevailed in 1967. Carpe America.
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