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Joint Economic Committee Democrats
Income Charts
Chart 1.5
Last updated 1/11/07
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The average after-tax income of households in the middle 20 percent of the income distribution was just over $48,000 in 2004.
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The average after-tax income of the top one percent of households was about $870,000 in 2004, almost 18 times higher than that of households in the middle of the distribution. The gap between average after-tax income at the top and in the middle of the distribution has increased substantially over time. Twenty-five years earlier, the average income of the top one percent of households was 7.9 times higher than average income in the middle.
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In 2004, the average after-tax income of the top one percent of households was almost 60 times higher than that of the bottom 20 percent of households. That ratio is more than double what it was 25 years earlier.
Source: Joint Economic Committee Democrats, based on Congressional Budget Office, “Historical Effective Tax Rates: 1979 to 2004,” December 2006, Table 1C. The Congressional Budget Office measures income differently from the Census Bureau and the two measures are not directly comparable. Click here for more information about the sources of income data.
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