A NYT article about the .01 Percent had a quote from Warren Buffet that caught my attention: “‘This is a significantly richer country than 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago,’ he declared, backing his assertion with a favorite statistic. The national income, divided by the population, is a very abundant $45,000 per capita, he said, a number that reflects an affluent nation but also obscures the lopsided income distribution intertwined with the prosperity.” This graph was an attempt to visualize that statistic. (Keep in mind that the numbers are in 2000 US$)
{Click on the graph to take a closer look} 
The US Gross National Income (GNI) represents the total buying power of citizens of the United States. This buying power can be transferred around the economy by taxation and lending. GNI includes Wages and Salaries + Rents + Interest + Profits (also includes Depreciation of Capital + Sales taxes – Subsidies). Since it is “National” it measures income from resources owned by the citizens of the United States, regardless where the production occurs. Gross national income is identical to gross national product (GNP).
The Real GNI data can be found at Bureau of Economic Analysis National Economic Accounts Table 1.7.6. Population data can be found at Census Historical Series and Census Current Estimates .
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, United States GNI, National Income[/tags]
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Not buying it. See http://www.shadowstats.com
How accurate is our measure of population? I would be surprised if this is accurate as we have imported about 1.5 million poor people a year into the USA for the period of this graph.
We “import” illegal aliens? Surely you jest.
@ Dan:
I don’t buy shadowstats.com’s website. I mean that literally – I’m not going to pay someone $175 for a bunch of conspiracy theories.
bery bad! i want a comparison between india and united states for national income data, per capita income, production in diferent sectors(industries), per capita consumption of steel power, petrol etc…
Most object to demonstrating the growth of per capita income on the basis of their political agenda.
They point to the statistics that show a much smaller per household income growth but purposely fail to point out that household size has substantially decreased and per capita real income has grown nicely.
They almost never show income statistics that include transfer payments, such as the earned income credit, medicaid health coverage, food stamps, and the like, which actually make the conditions at the bottom far more survivable than the pure income statistics typically suggest.
The overall real income statistic is further politically adjusted downward by overstating the inflation rate by failing to adjust the market basket for how real people have adjusted their real spending patterns.
Inflation is further miss-stated by virtue of the fact that we compare apples to oranges, as when we compare a 1967 standard automobile that came without air conditioning, wore out in four years, had no tape deck or even FM radio, and got 14 MPG, to today’s auto which has those features as standard and gets 23 MPG.
The poor in the 1950s did not have autos, color TVs, DVD players, ipods, and paid a larger percentage of their limited income for food and clothing.
Free and unfettered markets have created better conditions for the poor, the middle class and the rich – even if the richest rich are richer than the poor by a wider margin.
The politics of class envy can make us make the wrong decisions which make everyone poorer.