Jim D. probably got the info he wanted from from Leigh M. (citing Domhoff) and Michael P. (citing Poterba of MIT who heads the NBER section in Public Economics). I also thought he got a good question from Raghu.
But in case anyone else is interested in the data on wealth inequalities (I think the new inequality is a crucial area for research) or in case Jim has to be fussy about precision, then here are some thoughts. 1) As I am sure Jim knows, the most used source is the Fed Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances and the papers Leigh and Michael cite ultimately track to that source. Domhoff (via Wolff) is using partly using 2001 SCF data, but mostly an earlier analysis. Poterba is using the 1998 survey. As I reported to the list in Sept 2004, Woff last year has a more recent paper using the 2001 SCF that shows a significantly worse decline in *overall* equality (the paper is in Teresa Ghilarducci, forthcoming I am told; I can give people a draft). The most recent SCF is 2004 and FWIK it shows wealth yet more unequal, *overall*. The flavor of this most recent date can be seen at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/2004/2004 SCF Chartbook.zip A summary of the most recent SCF is at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/2004/bull0206.pdf 2) So why don't I just give Jim an extract from the latest data? The Fed doesn't do it this way. The SCF is a survey of households, not the stock market itself. So they report their data as 'the top 10% of households had $XX amount of stocks'; not 'X% of all stocks were held by 10% of households'. Strictly speaking you shouldn't make the latter statement based on this data - you could (and probably would) get very different numbers if you directly sampled the stock market itself. But, as we saw, big names say it anyway - but to do so they have to painstakingly reverse engineer the numbers from the SCF computer tapes (anyone good with SAS?). The 2004 SCF came out over the summer, so someone probably will get around to it. 3) I referred to equality *overall* ? Raghu raised an important point. I imagine Jim asked for numbers just on stock holdings because he was making a point just about the stock market. But when it comes to making a point about household financial wealth, or household wealth in general, then naturally Raghu is right: one has to take broader measures (the SCF tries to look at all forms of household wealth). In fact there was a decline in the mean value of stockholdings holdings of the richest 10% (but not the median) in 2004 compared to 2001 but much of this is simply the shifting of holdings by the wealthiest to more exotic forms. OTOH, as Wolf showed, the majority of the population has taken a large hit in their overall wealth because of the withdrawal of retirement plans (which indirectly is the way most people benefit from the stock market). Paul
