Household_Income_Inequality_Presentation

A growing concern in the United States has been the increasing disparity in wealth between upper an lower earners. While inequality is an inevitable fact of life, statistics show that the United States is ranked fifth in the world (and first among OECD countries) for income disparity based on the Gini Coefficient.

What's more, this disparity only seems to be increasing as the number of citizens within middle class decreases and the share of the aggregate wealth owned by the top 1% increases.

Using publicly available income datasets from the United States Census Bureau I created an interactive time series plot of incomes for each quintile plotted against share of aggregate wealth from 1967 to 2016. With this shiny app the user can investigate for his/herself the trend of income disparity over the last half century. The slider input allows the user to select the year of interest and the reactive plot repopulates as the slider is moved giving a moving graphic of the relative prosperity of the different income quintiles in the United States.

Source: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-inequality.html

The datasets are as follows:

       Year Number(Thousands) Lowest Second Third Fourth Top 5 Percent
1      2016            126224  24002  45600 74869 121018        225251
2      2015            125819  22800  43511 72001 117002        214462
3      2014            124587  21432  41186 68212 112262        206568
4 2013 (39)            123931  21000  41035 67200 110232        205128
5 2013 (38)            122952  20900  40187 65501 105910        196000
6      2012            122459  20599  39764 64582 104096        191156

       X__1   X__2 Lowest\nfifth Second\nfifth Third\nfifth Fourth\nfifth
1      2016 126224           3.1           8.3         14.2          22.9
2      2015 125819           3.1           8.2         14.3          23.2
3      2014 124587           3.1           8.2         14.3          23.2
4 2013 (39) 123931           3.1           8.2         14.3          23.0
5 2013 (38) 122952           3.2           8.4         14.4          23.0
6      2012 122459           3.2           8.3         14.4          23.0
  Highest\nfifth Top 5\npercent
1           51.5           22.6
2           51.1           22.1
3           51.2           21.9
4           51.4           22.2
5           51.0           22.2
6           51.0           22.3