Massachusetts Has Some of the Worst Income Inequality in America

Photo by Jim McIntosh on Flickr/Creative Commons

All across America, the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. But in few states other than Massachusetts does the chasm between the two yawn so wide, according to a new report on income inequality.

This news should hardly surprise those living here in the Hub. Earlier this year, a report by the Brooking Institution named Boston the most unequal big city in the country, with households at the top of the city’s income distribution making nearly 18 times what those at the bottom earn.

Statewide, it’s a grimmer picture. The Economic Policy Institute studied the latest available tax returns from 2013, and found that the Bay State’s top one percent of earners—$540,000 and above—make roughly 30 times as much as the bottom 99 percent. In other words, for every dollar you 99-percenters make, the folks at the top make $30.

The top one percent of families takes home 23 percent of all the income in Massachusetts. Suffolk County, meanwhile, is the most unequal in the state, in which the top one percent—boasting an average income of $2,351,713—make a staggering 51 times more than the bottom 99 percent.

Only in New York, Connecticut, Wyoming, Nevada, and Florida are the haves so far ahead of the have-nots. As the Globe‘s Evan Horowitz notes, Massachusetts is as unequal now as it was at the height of the Roaring Twenties, just before the Great Depression. And that bodes fabulously.

You can check out the Economic Policy Institute’s full report on Massachusetts here.