'Capital Ownership and Inequality'

Atif Mian and Amir Sufi follow up on something noted here a few days ago:

Capital Ownership and Inequality, by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi: Lots of interesting and thought-provoking reactions to our post yesterday on how the gains in U.S. productivity are shared.

One aspect of the debate that is often over-looked is the concentration of financial asset holdings in the U.S. economy. Who owns financial assets such as stocks and bonds in corporations tells us who has a direct claim to the income generated by capital. Here is the distribution of financial asset holdings across the wealth distribution. This is from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances:

The top 20% of the wealth distribution holds over 85% of the financial assets in the economy. So it is clear that the direct income from capital goes to the wealthiest American households. ...

There is ... the question of incorporating housing wealth in the graph above. How should we think about housing which is more broadly held? But it’s important to have the basic facts established to begin the debate. If you think the above chart is misleading or incorrect in some way, we are happy to hear why. ...