Wealth Concentrated at the Top Now More Than Ever

American business owners and landlords typically have four times the wealth as the average American, one of the widest wealth gaps of all the countries studied by Austrian central bank economists.

Economists Pirmin Fessler and Martin Schürz used survey data on European and U.S. business and homeownership in a pioneering study of wealth in terms of how it's used, finding that the greatest income and wealth inequalities are between groups within a country, rather than country versus country, The Washington Post reports. Harvard University economist Maximilian Kasy says that the analysis “helps with understanding the causes and consequences of differences in the distribution of total household wealth across time and across countries." The polarity between the haves and have-nots has been growing since 1962, according to the study's findings.

In their analysis, they split households into three groups. Homeowners, whose primary wealth is also their primary residence, form the bulk of the middle and upper middle class. Business owners and landlords (about 15 percent of U.S. households), tend to be among the wealthiest, their wealth typically used to generate additional income. Those who pay to rent their residences (about 35 percent of households), and whose wealth is typically used to cover needs such as emergency expenses or retirement, fill out the bottom of the spectrum. They’re joined by homeowners and business owners whose debt exceeds their equity. The bottom 40 percent are most likely to be renters. The top 5 percent are most likely to own businesses or rental properties.

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