The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

No facet of the first Gilded Age had been more glaring than the extremes of wealth. Even in 1913 the wealthiest 1 percent owned 45 percent of the country’s total wealth, and during the Roaring Twenties their share rose for a couple of years to 48 percent, as Figure 2.9 shows. In the following six decades, however, their share was more than halved to 22 percent, in large part by financial regulation and progressive taxation on income and estates, though in part because of redistributive spending. In other words, mirroring the great convergence in income was a great convergence in wealth. However, in recent decades the top 1 percent’s share of our national wealth surged back to nearly 40 percent by 2014 and has continued to increase.35 The top 1 percent in recent years have garnered roughly 20 percent of household income, but nearly 40 percent of household wealth. The share of wealth held by that top 1 percent nearly doubled from less than 25 percent of total national wealth in the early 1980s to more than 40 percent in 2016. In fact, the top 0.1 percent of American families now hold about 20 percent of household wealth, almost as much as at the peak of the first Gilded Age.