The U.S. Wealth Distribution: Off the Charts

Area of Science:

• Economics
• Sociology
• Data Visualization

Background:

• U.S. wealth inequality is rising, attracting significant public and scientific attention.
• Existing research often focuses on wealth concentration at the top (e.g., top 1%) or inequality within the remaining population (99%).
• These separate approaches limit a holistic understanding of the overall wealth distribution.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the challenge of visualizing both extreme top-end wealth concentration and broader distributional inequality.
• To provide an intuitive and interactive tool for exploring the full spectrum of U.S. wealth distribution in 2019.
• To bridge the gap between different perspectives on wealth inequality measurement.

Main Methods:

• Development of an interactive visualization tool.
• Integration of data spanning the entire U.S. population, from indebted households to multibillionaires.
• Focus on the year 2019 for wealth distribution analysis.

Main Results:

• The visualization effectively integrates data on wealth concentration at the top and inequality across the broader population.
• It allows users to intuitively grasp the scale and shape of the 2019 U.S. wealth distribution.
• The tool facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of how different segments of the population relate within the overall wealth landscape.

Conclusions:

• Jointly visualizing different facets of wealth inequality is crucial for a complete understanding.
• Interactive tools can enhance public and scientific intuition regarding complex economic distributions.
• This approach offers a novel method for studying and communicating wealth inequality in the United States.