What You Should Know About the Wealthiest 1% of Americans

It may shock you to learn exactly how wealthy this top 1% of Americans is. 

By Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress
Posted on October 4, 2011

As the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by hundreds of protesters enters its third week — and as protests spread to other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — demonstrators have endorsed a new slogan: “We are the 99%.” This slogan refers to an economic struggle between 99% of Americans and the richest 1% of Americans, who are increasingly accumulating a greater share of the national wealth to the detriment of the middle class.

It may shock you to learn exactly how wealthy this top 1% of Americans is. ThinkProgress has assembled five facts about this class of super-rich Americans:

1. The Top 1% of Americans Owns 40% of the Nation’s Wealth
 As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, the richest 1% of Americans now own 40% of the nation’s wealth. Sociologist William Domhoff illustrates this wealth disparity using 2007 figures where the top 1% owned 42% of the country’s financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home). How much does the bottom 80% own? Only 7%.


As Stiglitz notes, this disparity is much worse than it was in the past, as just 25 years ago the top 1% owned 33% of national wealth.

2. The Top 1% of Americans Take Home 24% of National Income
While the richest 1% of Americans take home almost a quarter of national income today, in 1976 they took home just 9% — meaning their share of the national income pool has nearly tripled in roughly three decades.

3. The Top 1% Of Americans Own Half of the Country’s Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds
 The Institute for Policy Studies illustrates this massive disparity in financial investment ownership, noting that the bottom 50% of Americans own only .5% of these investments.


4. The Top 1% Of Americans Have Only 5% of the Nation’s Personal Debt
Using 2007 figures, sociologist William Domhoff points out that the top 1% have 5% of the nation’s personal debt while the bottom 90% have 73% of total debt:


5. The Top 1% are Taking In More of the Nation’s Income Than at Any Other Time Since the 1920s
Not only are the wealthiest 1% of Americans taking home a tremendous portion of the national income, but their share of this income is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities illustrates in this chart using 2007 data:

As Professor Elizabeth Warren has explained, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

More and more often, that is not occurring, giving the protesters ample reason to take to the streets.