Journal
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Volume 77, Issue 5, Pages 679-699Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0003122412458508
Keywords
economy; inequalities; neo-liberalism; social class
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The income share of the super-rich in the United States has grown rapidly since the early 1980s after a period of postwar stability. What factors drove this change? In this study, we investigate the institutional, policy, and economic shifts that may explain rising income concentration. We use single-equation error correction models to estimate the long-and short-run effects of politics, policy, and economic factors on pretax top income shares between 1949 and 2008. We find that the rise of the super-rich is the result of rightward-shifts in Congress, the decline of labor unions, lower tax rates on high incomes, increased trade openness, and asset bubbles in stock and real estate markets.
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