By Isaiah J. Poole/Campaign for America's Future
The top 1 percent captured all of the income growth between 2009 and 2011 in 26 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the Economic Policy Institute found in a reportreleased February 19.
The report is a detailed look at the geography of income inequality. The broad contours are familiar: University of California at Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez has estimated that the top 1 percent received 95 percent of all of the income gains between 2009 and 2012. So it is not surprising that state-by-state profiles would show similar lopsided gains concentrated at the top. But they are still sobering.
The full EPI report looks at nearly a century of data, but the comparisons from 2009 are important because they mark what has happened to income growth since the end of the Great Recession.
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