In a press release today, according to AEI scholar Doug Besharov:

On income inequality: In addition, Besharov expects a continued increase in income inequality, with those at the top of the income distribution doing vastly better than the rest of America. Sixty percent of families have seen income gains, but most striking has been the startling growth of incomes for the top 20 percent of Americans. While incomes for the poorest Americans have remained essentially flat since 1969, those for the wealthy have almost doubled.

But not so fast John Edwards. According to Robert Rector of THF, the Census Bureau’s income data is flawed:

Income Inequality Census measures economic inequality by comparing the income received by the top 20 percent (quintile) of U.S. households with the poorest 20 percent of households. Census’ inequality figures are badly flawed because they fail to include taxes paid by high income families and most welfare received by low income families. The figures also fail to reflect there are far fewer persons in the bottom quintile of households than in the top quintile. In 2002, Census reported that the top quintile had $14.30 of income for every one dollar of income in the bottom quintile. After correcting for the above mentioned problems in the Census count, the real number was around $4.20 in income at the top for every one dollar at the bottom.