New Income Data Show Even More Uneven Gains
At first glance, it appears that Californians as a whole are far wealthier today than they were two decades ago. The total adjusted gross income (AGI) of all California taxpayers rose by nearly $300 billion on an inflation-adjusted basis over the past two decades – a gain that is roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Argentina today. But, as we’ve blogged about before, most of that additional income has flowed to a small sliver of wealthy Californians. New Franchise Tax Board data that we recently received enabled us to extend our analysis of income gains back to 1987 – six years earlier than our previous analysis. These new data show that of the nearly $300 billion increase in total AGI between 1987 and 2008:
- 40 percent of the gains went to the wealthiest 1 percent of California taxpayers;
- More than 70 percent of the gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers;
