GALLERY
Five Equal Groups, Five Unequal Shares
Households cut into five equal groups by income; the share of all income each group receives. The top fifth holds about 52%, the bottom fifth about 3%. The dotted line is what equal would look like.
Image credit
Chart: Urbanicity (STRATIFICATION-V1), from U.S. Census Bureau / Federal Reserve / Pew Research Center tables, 2023 data, rounded - the source line is printed on the chart.
Read the evidence
- SOURCE IT: who cut the country into fifths, by what income, counted how?
- LOOK: measure the top bar against the dotted line. How many equal shares does it hold?
- INFER: the counterclaim says every ruler shows this shape. Does the CBO's after-tax number weaken that or confirm it?
Parts & Labels
- The Fifths
- 20% of households each - equal by count
- The Ranges
- under $33k; $33-64k; $64-101k; $101-165k; $165k and up
- The Shares
- 3.0 / 8.2 / 14.1 / 22.6 / 52.1
- The Dotted Line
- 20%: the share if income were spread flat
Why It Existed
The hypothesis's cleanest ruler: no bracket choices, no definition of 'middle' - just cut the line in five. And still a choice: household or person? before tax or after? The Census says before, cash only.
Daily Use
The quintile table is the standard measure of inequality in every country's statistics. The Gini index compresses it to one number: 0.48 for the United States in 2023, up from about 0.40 in 1980; most of Western Europe sits between 0.27 and 0.35.
Comparison Panel
- 1980
- top fifth about 44%, Gini about 0.40
- 2023
- top fifth about 52%, Gini about 0.48
- After Taxes And Transfers (CBO)
- top fifth nearer 48% - the ruler moves the number by four points
Interesting Facts
- The bottom fifth's 3% is before benefits; count food stamps, housing aid and Medicaid and it roughly doubles.
- The top 5% - one household in twenty - receives about 23% of all income, nearly as much as the bottom three-fifths together.