I found this paper relevant, titled "Wealth Inequality and Return Heterogeneity During the COVID-19 Pandemic"; specifically this part of the abstract:
"We show that portfolio heterogeneity and asset price movements are the main determinants of wealth returns and inequality, whereas saving-rate heterogeneity and within-class return differences played a minor role. As the stock market continued to outperform the housing market, the return of the wealthy has risen faster than that of other households, reinforcing the wealth concentration at the top."
Oh, and the time limitation in the graph you reference only goes back to 1989. The recessions since the 80's have involved increasing federal bailouts and don't result in the kind of long term impact of organic corrections required to support the statement "wealth inequality only improves during recessions". With the fed stepping in and propping up failing corporations, that statement is only true for the narrow window of time at the start of the correction to where the stock price drops precipitously. Once the market responds to the bailout it is no longer a true statement because the most wealthy have taken advantage of the price decrease while individuals with smaller net worth eventually, but only, recover what they lost.
Taking a step back, I find your statement odd. Do you truly believe that or did you post that comment knowing it to be untrue in the hope to generate more discussion and push your user rank up in this system? Conspiratorial thinking on my part, but it only took me 15-20 minutes of reading to conclusively prove your statement untrue, and I'm not an economist. In light of that, it just seems...odd.
"We show that portfolio heterogeneity and asset price movements are the main determinants of wealth returns and inequality, whereas saving-rate heterogeneity and within-class return differences played a minor role. As the stock market continued to outperform the housing market, the return of the wealthy has risen faster than that of other households, reinforcing the wealth concentration at the top."
Oh, and the time limitation in the graph you reference only goes back to 1989. The recessions since the 80's have involved increasing federal bailouts and don't result in the kind of long term impact of organic corrections required to support the statement "wealth inequality only improves during recessions". With the fed stepping in and propping up failing corporations, that statement is only true for the narrow window of time at the start of the correction to where the stock price drops precipitously. Once the market responds to the bailout it is no longer a true statement because the most wealthy have taken advantage of the price decrease while individuals with smaller net worth eventually, but only, recover what they lost.
Taking a step back, I find your statement odd. Do you truly believe that or did you post that comment knowing it to be untrue in the hope to generate more discussion and push your user rank up in this system? Conspiratorial thinking on my part, but it only took me 15-20 minutes of reading to conclusively prove your statement untrue, and I'm not an economist. In light of that, it just seems...odd.