Wealth, Wages and Inequality– In Pictures

The Occupy movement has shifted the national conversation about income inequality in recent months. However, signs of the enormous gap between the very wealthy and everyone else are everywhere.

Second and third bar graphs based on a survey of more than 5,000 people conducted in December 2005, described in Perspectives on Psychological Science (January 2011). In the top bar graph showing actual wealth, the share of wealth owned by the poorest quintile (0.1%) and by the next-to-poorest (0.2%) are both so small that they are not visible.

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Images or design concepts thanks to occupydesign.org, except for Millionaires in Congress chart (chrispiascik.com) and wealth distribution bar graphs (Norton and Ariely in Perspectives on Psychological Science, January 2011).