A Timeline of Income Inequality in America

Over the past week, Slate has been publishing a series called "The United States of Inequality" about — you guessed it — income inequality in the U.S. of A. and many of the potential explanations for such inequality, including race, gender, immigration, trade, government policies and education. It's a fascinating collection of articles, and I highly recommend reading parts one, two, three, four and five in their entirety. (More articles in the series will be coming out over the coming week.)

When I started reading the series, I realized how little I knew about the history of American income inequality. I knew significant inequalities exist today, of course, but I didn't know a whole lot about how our society got this way. As it turns out, it's a fascinating story. Here's a basic timeline of events:

1915: University of Wisconsin statistician Willford I. King publishes The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, which finds that the richest one percent of Americans are in control of about 15 percent of the nation's income. (It turns out King was off a bit — it was actually 18 percent. But who's counting.)

1920s: After dropping a bit in the late teens, income inequality climbs steadily, peaking in 1929, just before the stock market crash. It's a bad time to be a poor person (and an awesome time to be a rich person!) in America.

1930s-1940s: As America settles into, and then moves beyond, the Great Depression, the trend reverses itself, and incomes become more equal.

1950s-1960s: The period called the Great Convergence holds steady, and income distribution is pretty much stable. It's happy times in the USA. According to Slate, "Assuming you were white, not of draft age, and Christian, there probably was no better time to belong to America's middle class."

1970s: Cue the ominous music. Wages stagnate, inflation goes wild and, by the end of the decade, income inequality starts to rise once again.

1980s-today: The Great Divergence rages on. Except for a brief period in the late '90s, income inequality grows like mad. Despite periods of significant economic growth, from 1980 to 2005 some 80 percent of income growth was absorbed by the richest one percent of Americans, who today account for 24 percent of the nation's income. Meanwhile, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans — the really rich folks — have seen their income share quadruple.

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