Surge in top income shares has happened primarily in English speaking
countries, not as much in Continental Europe and Japan [Atkinson, Piketty, Saez
JEL'11]
Increases in inequality at the
very top
of the U.S. income distribution (1% and
higher) has been particularly sizeable since the 1970s: the share of total wages
and salaries earned by the top 1 percent wage income earners has jumped from
5.1 percent in 1970 to 12.0 percent in 2006. development (Piketty and Saez,
2003, 2006)
