Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality

About this research

This Pew Research Center report looks at Americans’ views of economic inequality, including what factors they think contribute to it and who they believe should be responsible for reducing inequality. It also explores trends in income and wealth inequality.

Why did we do this?

Pew Research Center does research to help the public, the media and decision-makers understand important topics. This analysis builds on our previous work on economic issues.

Learn more about Pew Research Center.

How did we do this?

The analysis of Americans’ views of economic inequality is based primarily on a Pew Research Center survey of 5,166 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 24-30, 2026. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel. The survey is designed to represent the views of all U.S. adults.

Here are the survey questions used for this report, the detailed responses and the survey methodology.

In addition to survey data, the report also examines the trends in the typical income and wealth of lower-, middle- and upper-income households using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and other standard government sources.

Most Americans say there’s too much economic inequality in the United States these days. To understand how people’s financial circumstances have changed in recent decades, we looked at trends in income and wealth for lower-, middle- and upper-income households since 2000.

Income and wealth have grown for each group. But the gains have been greatest for upper-income households, leading to increased economic inequality.

The median income for upper-income households increased 25% between 2001 and 2024 (from $222,800 to $278,800). Incomes for middle- and lower-income households grew less over that period – 22% and 17%, respectively. (All income figures have been adjusted for inflation.)

One way to measure income inequality is to look at the gap between upper- and lower-income households. In 2024, upper-income households had 7.3 times the typical income of lower-income households. The ratio was 6.8 in 2001.

Read about Americans’ views of economic inequality, including the factors they think contribute to it and who should be responsible for reducing it.

How we define income tiers

“Middle-income” households have an annual household income that is two-thirds to double the national median, after incomes have been adjusted for household size. Lower-income households have incomes less than two-thirds of the median, and upper-income households have incomes that are more than double the median. In 2024, a family of three would be “middle income” with an income between $66,700 and $200,000.

Income inequality varies across metropolitan areas

The income gap between upper- and lower-income households varies across the U.S. We analyzed 204 metropolitan areas and found the upper-to-lower income ratio ranged from 5.7 to 9.7, as of 2024.

The metro areas with the most income inequality are concentrated on the East and West coasts. However, the area with the highest upper-to-lower income ratio is in the middle of the country: In Iowa City, Iowa, upper-income households had 9.7 times the median income of lower-income households in 2024 ($239,300 vs. $24,600).

The metro area with the lowest level of income inequality was Canton-Massillon, Ohio. The median income of upper-income households there was 5.7 times higher than that of lower-income households ($235,000 vs. $41,200).

Wealth inequality is up sharply from 2001

Wealth is spread much less evenly across U.S. households than income, and the gap in wealth between upper- and lower-income households has grown wider between 2001 and 2022.

Over that period, median wealth increased for middle- and upper-income households and remained mostly flat for lower-income households.

Upper-income households saw the largest gains, with wealth increasing 73% (from $800,600 to $1,386,900).

Wealth increased 25% for middle-income households and only 8% for lower-income households.

All told, upper-income households owned about 49 times the median wealth of lower-income households in 2022. That gap has increased from 31 times in 2001.

As the Federal Reserve and others have reported, while the wealth gap has widened significantly across households since 2001, it was even higher in 2016 than it was in 2022.