THE $79 TRILLION COST OF

AMERICA’S GROWING INCOME INEQUALITY

For decades after World War II, economic growth in the United States was broadly shared. As the economy became more productive, incomes generally rose across the income distribution. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, an increasingly larger share of income began flowing to those at the top.

A 2025 RAND Corporation study, Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023, calculated the enormous cost of that change. According to RAND, the bottom 90 percent of American workers would have received approximately $79 trillion more between 1975 and 2023 if they had continued receiving the same share of taxable income they received in 1975.

In 1975, the bottom 90 percent received 66.57 percent of taxable income. By 2015, their share had fallen below half, and by 2019 it had dropped to 46.83 percent. This occurred even as inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) per worker increased 93.2 percent between 1975 and 2023.

The decline continued in recent years. Between 2015 and 2019, the share of taxable income going to the bottom 90 percent fell from 49.53 percent to 46.83 percent. RAND estimated that this change alone increased the income gap by approximately $3 trillion in just four years.

RAND's previous study estimated a $47 trillion income gap from 1975 through 2018, measured in 2018 dollars. Extending the analysis through 2023, adjusting for inflation and accounting for continued growth in inequality increased the estimate to $79 trillion in 2023 dollars. In 2023 alone, RAND estimated that the bottom 90 percent would have received another $3.9 trillion if the 1975 income distribution had remained in place.

The $79 trillion figure does not mean that $79 trillion was literally removed from workers' paychecks and deposited directly into the accounts of the wealthy. It measures the cumulative difference between what the bottom 90 percent actually received and what they would have received if their share of taxable income had remained at its 1975 level.

More recent data show that the enormous divide between workers and those at the top has continued. The Economic Policy Institute's 2026 CEO Pay analysis found that CEO compensation at the 350 largest U.S. firms increased 1,316 percent between 1978 and 2025, compared with only 28 percent for typical workers. In 2025, these CEOs received an average of approximately $27.9 million and were paid about 325 times as much as a typical worker.

At the same time, union membership declined from 20.1 percent of wage and salary workers in 1983 to 10 percent in 2025, weakening the collective bargaining power of millions of workers.

The United States did not stop creating wealth. It created enormous amounts of it. What changed was how that income was divided.

RAND's calculation puts a staggering figure on nearly half a century of growing inequality: $79 trillion in income that the bottom 90 percent would have received if they had maintained their 1975 share of America's taxable income.

RAND: Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023 PDF

RAND: Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023 Extending Previous Work

Economic Policy Institute: CEO-to-worker pay has skyrocketed over the last six decades

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Union Members 2025 PDF

The $79 Trillion Heist (The American Prospect, 12-3-25)