“The average income of the bottom 90 percent fell 13.5 percent.”

from David Ruccio

David Leonhardt, in an otherwise interesting post on slow economic growth and increasing inequality in the United States, “which has concentrated the economy’s modest gains among a small share of the population,” actually underestimates the increase in inequality over the course of the past three decades. 

source

Here is what I’ve come up with (using average incomes in the United States  for different income groups, in real 2010 dollars) in terms of percentage increases from 1980 to 2010 :

Top .01 percent: 502 percent

Top .1 percent: 301 percent

Top .5 percent: 190 percent

Top 1 percent: 154 percent

Bottom 90 percent: -4.5 percent

And, yes, while “since 2000, no income group has done particularly well,” the average income of the top .01 percent did increase 6.5 percent while the average income of the bottom 90 percent fell 13.5 percent.