Continuing a trend that started 35 years ago, an Economic Policy Institute report documents that the benefits of the rebounding economy are flowing primarily to the wealthiest Americans.

Continuing a trend that started 35 years ago, an Economic Policy Institute report documents that the benefits of the rebounding economy are flowing primarily to the wealthiest Americans.

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Colorado’s economy has grown at a steady 6 percent clip in recent years. And income growth is up. That is, if you are among the state’s wealthiest 1 percent.

Colorado’s wealthiest have seen their income increase on average by 48 percent from 2009 to 2012, while incomes for the bottom 99 percent declined by 1 percent, according to a report released last week by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on economic policies affecting working Americans.

Colorado was not alone. In 15 other states, all economic growth over the three years analyzed in the report was accrued by the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. These states are Delaware, Florida, Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, Connecticut, Washington, Louisiana, California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Nevada.

In the remaining states, spread across the country, more than half of the income growth was captured by the wealthiest 1 percent.

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The skewed distribution income growth reflects a national trend in which the wealthiest are benefiting much more from the rebounding economy than the rest of the U.S. population.

The Economic Policy’s Institute’s report, titled the Increasingly Unequal States of America, examined widely cited economic indicators, and breaks out the trends by state.

The report also provides historical economic data showing that the income disparity seen in recent years isn’t new.

“Lopsided income growth is also a long-term trend,” states the EPI report. “Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent took home well over half (53.9 percent) of the total increase in U.S. income. Over this period, the average income of the bottom 99 percent of U.S. taxpayers grew by 18.9 percent. Simultaneously, the average income of the top 1 percent grew over 10 times as much—by 200.5 percent.”

Conversely, the report found that between 1928 and 1979, the income flowing to the top 1 percent declined in every state, except one.

In an article, published in the current issue of the Hoover Institute’s Hoover Digest, discussing the long-term trend of income inequality, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Michael Spence wrote, “In the United States, how much of the increase in income inequality over the past three decades reflects technological change and globalization (both favoring those with higher levels of education and skills) and how much reflects privileged access to the policy-making process is a complex and unsettled question.”