ABSTRACT
The recent dramatic rise in income inequality in the United States is well documented. But we know less about which groups are winners and which are losers, or how this may have changed over time. In the United States, and most other countries, household income surveys virtually did not exist prior to 1960. This chapter defines income as the sum of all income components reported on tax returns (wages and salaries, pensions received, profits from businesses, capital income such as dividends, interest, or rents, and realized capital gains) before individual income taxes. It distinguishes between the 1994-2000 expansion of the Clinton administration and the 2002-2005 expansion of the Bush administration. The chapter explains why the dramatic growth in top incomes during the Clinton administration did not generate much public outcry while there has been an extraordinary level of attention to top incomes in the press and in the public debate over the last two years.
