Louisiana’s top 1%—its wealthiest families—earned nearly 21 times as much as the state’s bottom 99% in 2013, according to a June report from the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.
The report ranks the state 16th out of 50 in terms of income inequality.
In Louisiana, the top 1% took home 17% of all income earned in 2013 at an average annual income of $859,619.
Meanwhile, the average annual income for everyone else in Louisiana—the 99%—was $41,600 in 2013.
While incomes at all levels declined during the Great Recession, growth has been lopsided during the recession’s recovery.
Louisiana is one of 15 states in which the top 1% captured all income growth between 2009 and 2013.
At the parish level, the average annual income in 2013 for those in the top 1% in East Baton Rouge was $1.1 million, while the average income for the bottom 99% was $45,481.
East Baton Rouge Parish ranked 205 out of 3,064 U.S. counties. Counties with the widest gap were ranked at the top of the list while counties with the small gap were at the bottom. New York, Connecticut and Wyoming had the widest income gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99. In those states, the wealthiest families earned 40 times more than the bottom 99% of families.
Income inequality has already proven to be a hot topic in this year’s presidential election as the gap between the nation’s wealthiest and poorest workers has grown substantially since the 1970s and even more after the Great Recession.
To be in the 1% in 2013, an American family had to earn an annual income of $1.2 million. In Louisiana, a family had to earn at least $325,163 to be in the top 1%.
The Economic Policy Institute found that income growth was relatively lopsided between 1979 and 2007, a period in which the income of the top 1% grew in every state and when growing income equality after the Great Depression was reversed.
It attributes the growth during the first half of the 20th century to a rising minimum wage and low levels of unemployment.
Read the full report.
