World Top Incomes and Inequality

In 2013 the average income of the Top-1% Americans reached 1.12 million dollars (including capital gains): 35 times higher than the average income of the 90% of the population. According to the data from The World Top Incomes Database, maintained by the Paris School of Economics, top-10% most wealthy persons for now share about one half of overall personal income in the US. Such a large Top-10% income share have not be seen even in Great Depression. The overall inequality, as measured by the Pareto-Lorenz coefficient (inversed), has increased to the highest levels in about the century.

Less than 60% of the most rich persons' income in the US and other countries comes from wages and salaries. The huge parts are rents, entrepreneurial income and capital gains from investments. The share of non-wage income decreasing along with overall income level. For the bottom 90% of the population capital gains make up only 2% of the total.

Choose the country from the list at the top of the page to explore the data on the incomes and inequality

Please note that the top income share series are constructed, in most of the cases presented in this database, using tax statistics, which tend to underestimate the top income levels because of tax avoidance and tax evasion. Also, definition of income and the unit of observation (the individual vs. the family) vary across countries and even within some country-level time-series, there are breaks in comparability that arise because of changes in tax legislation affecting the definition of income. For further methodological details please consult The Top Incomes Database home page and the corresponding papers