Yet another alternative is to focus on inequality in consumption, which implicitly accounts for all forms and sources of incomes, taxes and transfers. Some estimates based on consumption show that inequality in the U.
Empirically, consumption can be harder to measure than income. The growth in income in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households. At the same time, the U. This downsizing has proceeded slowly but surely since , with each decade thereafter typically ending with a smaller share of adults living in middle-income households than at the beginning of the decade. The decline in the middle-class share is not a total sign of regression.
On balance, there was more movement up the income ladder than down the income ladder. But middle-class incomes have not grown at the rate of upper-tier incomes.
Incomes are expressed in dollars. More tepid growth in the income of middle-class households and the reduction in the share of households in the middle-income tier led to a steep fall in the share of U. These trends in income reflect the growth in economic inequality overall in the U. Even among higher-income families, the growth in income has favored those at the top. This disparity in outcomes is less pronounced in the wake of the Great Recession but shows no signs of reversing. From to , the change in mean family income ranged from a loss of 0.
Thus, the s marked the beginning of a long and steady rise in income inequality. A similar pattern prevailed in the s, with even sharper growth in income at the top. The period from to is unique in the post-WWII era. Families in all strata experienced a loss in income in this decade, with those in the poorer strata experiencing more pronounced losses.
The pattern in income growth from to is more balanced than the previous three decades, with gains more broadly shared across poorer and better-off families. Other than income, the wealth of a family is a key indicator of its financial security. Wealth, or net worth, is the value of assets owned by a family, such as a home or a savings account, minus outstanding debt, such as a mortgage or student loan.
Accumulated over time, wealth is a source of retirement income, protects against short-term economic shocks, and provides security and social status for future generations. Gates drops out of the top two for the first time in three decades. The duo stepped down as chief executive and president, respectively, of Google parent Alphabet in late amid a Congressional antitrust investigation but remain on the board and retain controlling stakes in it. Page has reportedly been riding out the pandemic in Fiji; Brin, whose yacht was recently spotted near Fiji and Tahiti, set up a Singapore branch of his family office.
Oracle chairman, chief technology officer and cofounder Larry Ellison. The Oracle of Omaha, who was famously reluctant to plunge into tech stocks, has been amassing a 21st-century portfolio. Berkshire Hathaway now owns billion-dollar stakes in Apple, Amazon and Snowflake. This year his giving has included donations to Covid response efforts, climate change mitigation and creating a center at Princeton, named for his eldest daughter, Emma, aimed at increasing student diversity.
As the co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates is one of the most recognisable faces of the technology revolution and between to , he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world every year except from to Mark Zuckerberg is probably to blame for you wasting so much time online in the s.
Zuckberg is the cofounder, chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder of Facebook , with the social networking site's success leading to his billionaire status. Dropping out of Harvard to develop the site, Facebook has grown to have an estimated 2. As well as this, he owns shares in Elon Musk's company Tesla , and even owns the Hawaiian island of Lana'i.
The second Larry on the billionaire list, Page is best known as the co-founder of search engine Google. He is also an investor in Tesla motors, founded the think tank Singularity University, and is interested in renewable energy. Worth slightly less than Page but still very, very rich, Sergey Brin is the other cofounder of Google.
Brin was president of Alphabet Inc until , and remains at the company as a co-founder, board member and controlling shareholder. He has been involved in Google's Project Glass program and its driverless car project, and is also interested in blockchain technology.
It also briefly sold a handheld flamethrower. The majority of his wealth, however, actually comes from his massive stake in Christian Dior SE, the holding company that controls His shares in Christian Dior SE, plus an additional 6.
He was invited to invest in LVMH in and became the majority shareholder, chair of the board, and CEO of the company two years later. While attending Harvard University in , Bill Gates went to work alongside his childhood friend Paul Allen to develop new software for the original microcomputers.
In addition to being the largest software company in the world, Microsoft also produces its own line of personal computers, publishes books through Microsoft Press, provides email services through its Exchange server, and sells video game systems and associated peripheral devices.
Originally Microsoft's chief software architect, Gates later transitioned to the role of chair in He stepped down from both boards on March 13, In , Gates's two philanthropic organizations—the William H. Through the foundation, he has spent billions to fight polio and malaria. In , alongside Warren Buffett, Bill Gates launched the Giving Pledge, a campaign encouraging rich individuals to commit to donating the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.
As Facebook began to be used at other universities, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to focus entirely on his growing business. Facebook is the world's largest social networking service, enabling its users to create a personal profile, connect with friends and family, join or create groups, and much more.
As the website is free to use, most of the company's revenue is generated through advertising. Meta is also host to several other brands, including photo-sharing app Instagram, which it acquired in ; cross-platform mobile messaging service WhatsApp and virtual-reality—headset producer Oculus, both acquired in ; Workplace, its enterprise-connectivity platform; Portal, its line of video-calling devices; and Novi, its digital wallet for the Diem payment system.
Their charity seeks to leverage technology to fix societal ills, such as improving the access and quality of education, reforming both the criminal justice system and the U.
The most famous living value investor, Warren Buffett filed his first tax return in at age 14, declaring his earnings from his boyhood paper route. He first bought shares in a textile company called Berkshire Hathaway in , becoming the majority shareholder by He expanded the company to insurance and other investments in Widely known as the "Oracle of Omaha," Buffett made the majority of his fortune through purchasing shares in companies with easy-to-understand business operations.
While many investors have been piling into tech companies, Buffett has opted for a more cautious approach, only buying from well-established companies that are easier to understand, such as IBM and Apple. He is also a noted Bitcoin skeptic. Outside of investing, Buffett has directed much of his wealth toward philanthropic endeavors.
Buffett launched the Giving Pledge alongside Bill Gates in After dropping out of the University of Chicago in , Larry Ellison moved to California and worked as a computer programmer for several companies over the years. First, in , he was an employee of the electronics company Ampex, where he met future partners Ed Oates and Bob Miner. Additionally, Ellison joined Tesla's board in Dec. Oracle is the second-largest software company and provides a wide variety of cloud computing programs as well as other software, such as Java and Linux, and the Oracle Exadata computing platform.
The business has also grown through the acquisition of several major companies, including human resources management systems provider PeopleSoft in , customer relationship management applications provider Siebel in , enterprise infrastructure software provider BEA Systems in , and hardware-and-software developer Sun Microsystems in Ellison has spent millions in luxury real estate over the last decade, predominantly in California.
He has also donated millions of dollars to charitable causes over the years, particularly to medical research. Like several tech billionaires on this list, Larry Page's claim to fame got its start in a college dorm room. While attending Stanford University in , Page and his friend Sergey Brin came up with the idea of improving data extraction capabilities while accessing the Internet.
The duo devised a new type of search engine technology they dubbed "Backrub," named after its ability to analyze "backing links. In , Google the company expanded by purchasing YouTube, the biggest platform for user-submitted videos.
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