Top Heavy

This newly updated and expanded edition of Top Heavy offers compelling and timely evidence that the inequality of wealth among American citizens is continuing to grow. As Richard C. Leone writes in the book's foreword. "[while] it may be fashionable to look past such unpleasant information ... Wolff has made an important contribution by simply forcing his readers to react to the eloquence of the facts." And the facts are grim: the gap between haves and have-nots is greater at the start of the 21st century than at any time since 1929. the median white household still has eight times as much wealth as the median black household. virtually all the growth in marketable wealth between 1983 and 1998 accrued to the top 20% of households, while the bottom 40% of households saw its wealth decline in absolute terms. It would take a city of almost a quarter of a million average American families to match the net worth of Bill Gates.

Edward N. Wolff is a professor of economics at New York University, the author of many books and articles on economic and tax policy, and the managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth