Income Growth of the Top 1% vs. the Bottom 50% Since 1980

Data

Note: How Income Growth Diverged Between the Top 1% and Everyone Else

What the Data Shows

Since 1980, cumulative income growth for the top 1% of earners reached +240% by 2023, while the bottom 50% grew just +55%. The gap was already visible by 1990 (+67% vs +8%) and widened dramatically after 2000.

• In 2000 the top 1% had grown +152% versus +23% for the bottom 50%.
• After the 2008 financial crisis, growth in 2010 fell to +120% and +15% as both groups lost ground.
• By 2023 the top 1% had grown +240%, roughly 4.4 times the bottom 50%'s +55%.

How These Numbers Are Measured

The figures come from the Economic Policy Institute's analysis, which tracks real, inflation-adjusted income growth cumulatively from a 1980 baseline. The bottom 50% grouping excludes households with zero or negative income and includes retirees and part-time workers, which shapes the comparison. The top 1% refers to the top 1% of households by income, a group whose incomes include both labor earnings and large capital gains.

Why the Top 1% Pulled Ahead

Several forces compound in favor of top earners. High earners capture a share of capital income from stocks, dividends, and business profits that grows with rising markets. Executive pay has risen much faster than average wages. Globalization and automation have squeezed routine jobs while rewarding skill-intensive work, and tax policy changes since the 1980s left more pre-tax gains in the hands of the highest earners.

• Capital income concentrates heavily at the top, and markets rose strongly across the period.
• CEO and executive compensation has outpaced typical worker pay for decades.
• Technology and offshoring eroded wage growth for many routine occupations.
• Union membership declined sharply among private-sector workers over the same decades.

The Crisis Setback and the Recovery

The 2010 reading shows how concentrated the damage from the 2008 crisis was: top 1% growth dropped from +160% to +120%, while bottom 50% growth fell from +28% to +15%. The recovery that followed was lopsided. Asset markets recovered far faster than wages, so the top 1% regained lost ground quickly while the bottom half crawled back over a decade.

What It Means for the Broader Economy

When the bottom half grows slowly, consumers lean on credit, and median households feel squeezed by housing, health care, and education costs that rise faster than paychecks. The divergence also shows up in standard inequality measures like the Gini coefficient, which has drifted upward over the same decades. Policy responses under debate include minimum wage increases, stronger collective bargaining, and tax changes.

Fun Facts

• In 1980 the top 1% had already grown +4% while the bottom 50% sat at +0%, a gap from day one.
• The 1980s were the top 1%'s strongest single decade in the table, jumping from +4% to +67%.
• The bottom 50% took until 2023 to reach +55%, roughly what the top 1% had already posted by 1985.
• Both groups grew fastest in the 1990s, a period of strong productivity and wage gains.
• The 2008 crisis was the only event in the entire table that dented the top 1%'s trajectory.
• The absolute income gap is far larger than the percentage gap, because top incomes started from a much bigger base.
• The bottom 50% has never once outpaced the top 1% in a single year in this data.