Extreme gap still exists, but it’s just 20th in U.S.

Want to join the top 1 percent of income earners in Colorado? The price of admission is a household income of $458,576 a year, according to a study on income inequality from the Economic Policy Institute.

The median income for that elite group is closer to $1.26 million a year, or 20.6 times the median income of $61,165 for the remaining 99 percent. About 17.2 percent of the income earned in the state accrues to that small group.

“What we see overall in the U.S. economy and in Colorado is shrinking economic opportunity and decreased economic mobility. People who don’t have a lot are finding it harder to get by,” said Claire Sheridan, a research and policy analyst at the Colorado Center on Law and Policy in Denver.

As extreme as that gap may sound, Colorado’s inequality ratio is only the 20th-highest of any state, and below the U.S. ratio of 26.3. And while the share of income claimed by the top 1 percent continues to remain near record levels nationally, it looks to be moving in the other direction in Colorado.

Among Colorado counties, income disparities are the most extreme in Pitkin County, where the top 1 percent of households, median income of $6.6 million, earn 72.2 times the remaining 99 percent, with a respectable median income of $91,714.

Pitkin County is home to Aspen, so that may not come as a surprise. But among metro areas in the state, the biggest disparity is in nearby Glenwood Springs. The top 1 percent, with a median income of $2.97 million, make 45 times the $66,015 earned by the bottom 99 percent.

Sheridan said a variety of factors — from stagnant wages to financial deregulation to globalization — have contributed to income concentration. Higher incomes contribute to a concentration of wealth, which can help generate more income.

Between 1973 and 2015, 44 percent of income growth nationally went to the top 1 percent of earners, with the remaining 46 percent of the gains split among the 99 percent, according to EPI.

But it wasn’t always that way. EPI notes that between 1945 and 1973, a much smaller 4 percent of income gains accrued to the top 1 percent of house-

holds by income, with 96 percent going to the remainder.

As income concentrates at the top, Colorado has seen an increase in the share of households in both the lower and upperincome brackets, but a shrinking of the middle class, according to a separate study from the Bell Policy Center in Denver.

Higher-income households went from 16.5 per- cent of Colorado households in 2000 to 18.3 percent in 2016, while the share of low-income households rose from 30.5 percent to 32.1 percent over the 16year period.

The middle class lost share, falling from 53 percent of households back in 2000 to 49.6 percent by 2016, the 11th-largest decline of any state over that period.