Table A8

Comparison of Piketty and Saez’s 2016 results with Sommeiller and Price’s 2018 results

From Table 1. Ratio of top 1% income to bottom 99% income, U.S. and by state and region, 2015
Source Average income of the bottom 99% Average income of the top 1% Top-to-bottom ratio
Sommeiller and Price $50,107 $1,316,985 26.3
Piketty and Saez $48,768 $1,363,977 28.0
From Table 4. Income threshold of top 1% and top 0.01%, and average income of top 0.01%, U.S. and by state and region, 2015
Source Income threshold of top 1% Income threshold of top 0.01% Average income of top 0.01%
Sommeiller and Price $421,926 $9,765,989 $32,317,855
Piketty and Saez $442,900 $11,267,000 $31,616,431
From Table 10. Shares of total income growth captured by the top 1% from 1945 to 1973, 1973 to 2007, and 2009 to 2015, U.S. and by state and region
Source 1945–1973 1973–2007 2009–2015
Sommeiller and Price 4.9% 58.7% 41.8%
Piketty and Saez 5.5% 65.9% 52.1%
From Table 11. Top 1% share of all income, U.S. and by state and region, 1928, 1973, 2007, 2015, and changes in shares across periods
Top 1% share of all income Change in income share of the top 1% (percentage points)
 Source 1928 1973 2007 2015 1928–1973 1973–2007 1973–2015
Sommeiller and Price 23.4% 9.2% 21.7% 21.0% -14.2 12.5 11.8
Piketty and Saez 23.9% 10.0% 23.5% 22.0% -14.0 13.5 12.1

Note: The income shares reported in Table 11 are indexed to Piketty and Saez 2016 as requested for submission of our state-level estimates to the World Inequality Database. The income shares reported above are the top income shares from our analysis before indexing to the national estimates.

Source: Authors’ analysis of state-level tax data from Sommeiller 2006 extended to 2015 using state-level data from the Internal Revenue Service SOI Tax Stats (various years) and Piketty and Saez 2016

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