Global Financial Shocks and American Elites: Income and Wealth of the One Percent in the United States,1989 to 2022

Abstract

Extreme levels of inequality have drawn increasing attention to those at the top of the income and wealth distributions, and the United States is home to some of the world’s most affluent and influential households. A robust literature on economic elites in the United States documented details about their incomes and wealth prior to 2019, but it is unclear how recent economic shocks affected their financial resources and the distribution of income and wealth among U.S. households more broadly. We contribute to the literatures on elite households and global political economies by exploring the association between the global economic shock that accompanied the coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic and U.S. income and wealth. We use data from the 1989 to 2022 of Consumer Finances (SCF) to provide details regarding changing inequality and the incomes and wealth of the top one percent of households. We explore changes in income sources (e.g., wage, business, capital) and wealth components (e.g., real estate, financial assets) to identify reasons for changing resource composition. We study how the demographics—age and education—of the one percent have changed, and we also explore whether the double-rich—those with both top incomes and top wealth—have changed. Our results are among the first to document the current concentration of economic resources in the United States and underscore the need to incorporate global processes in understanding inequalities in major economies.