A new study has shown that the income gap between the richest 1 percent in the United States and the rest of the American people reached its widest point in 2012 since 1928.\n<\/p>\n
An analysis of the Internal Revenue Service™s data by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics, and Oxford University has shown that the richest 1 percent in the US collected 19.3 percent of household income in 2012, their biggest share since 1928.\n<\/p>\n
The wealthiest 10 percent also collected 48.2 percent of the total earnings in 2012.\n<\/p>\n
The richest 1 percent of American households had incomes exceeding $394,000 and the richest 10 percent had incomes above $114,000.\n<\/p>\n
The income figures in the study included wages, pension payments, dividends, and capital gains from selling stocks and other assets.\n<\/p>\n
The study also showed that the incomes of the top 1 percent of US earners increased nearly 20 percent in 2012 while the remaining 99 percent of American earners saw only a 1 percent increase in their incomes.\n<\/p>\n
According to the analysis, income inequality in the US has been widening steadily since the early 1980s.\n<\/p>\n
Among the reasons cited for the widening income inequality in the US was a decrease in the percentage of American workers represented by unions.\n<\/p>\n
In 1983, 23.3 percent of US workers were represented by unions. That number dropped to 12.5 percent in 2012.\n<\/p>\n
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