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As of Q4 2013, total household net worth in the United States is $80.664 trillion, an increase of $9.8 trillion from 2012. Employee compensation amounts to $8.969 trillion, while gross private investment totals $2.781 trillion.[143] The mean net worth of US adults increased to $301,140 in 2013, with the majority being held in financial assets, due to higher activity by shareholders and more private investment.[144] Including human capital such as skills, the United Nations estimated the total wealth of the United States in 2008 to be $118 trillion.[145] Americans have the highest average household income among OECD nations, and in 2010 had the fourth highest median household income, down from second highest in 2007.[38][39] While inflation-adjusted household income had been increasing almost every year from 1945 to 2007, it has since been flat and even decreased recently.[146] U.S. median household income fell from $51,144 in 2010 to $50,502 in 2011.[147] According to one analysis middle class incomes in the United States fell into a tie with those in Canada in 2010, and may have fallen behind by 2014, while several other advanced economies have closed the gap in recent years.[148] The top 1 percent of income-earners accounted for 95 percent of the income gains from 2009 to 2012,[149] while their share of total income has more than doubled from 9 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011.[150] According to a 2014 OECD report, 80% of total income growth went to the top 10% from 1975 to 2007.[151] The top 10% wealthiest possess 80% of all financial assets.[152] Wealth inequality in the U.S. is greater than in most developed countries other than Switzerland and Denmark.[153] Inherited wealth may help explain why many Americans who have become rich may have had a "substantial head start".[154][155] In September 2012, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, "over 60 percent" of the Forbes richest 400 Americans "grew up in substantial privilege".[156] A number of economists and others have expressed growing concern about income inequality, calling it "deeply worrying",[157] unjust,[158] a danger to democracy/social stability,[159][160][161] or a sign of national decline.[162] Yale professor Robert Shiller has said, "The most important problem that we are facing now today, I think, is rising inequality in the United States and elsewhere in the world."[163] Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics argues that the post-1980 increase in inequality played a role in the 2008 crisis by contributing to the nation's financial instability.[164] Others disagree, saying there is a lack of evidence that the success of some harms others, and that the inequality issue is a political distraction from what they consider real problems like chronic unemployment and sluggish growth.[165][166] George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen has called inequality a "red herring",[167] saying that factors driving its increase within a nation can simultaneously be driving its reduction globally, and arguing that redistributive policies intended to reduce inequality can do more harm than good regarding the real problem of stagnant wages.[168] Robert Lucas, Jr. has argued that the salient problem American living standards face is a government that has grown too much, and that recent policy shifts in the direction of European style taxation, welfare spending, and regulation may be indefinitely putting the US on a significantly lower, European level income trajectory.[169][170] Some researchers have disputed the accuracy of the underlying data regarding claims about inequality trends,[171][172] and economists Michael Bordo and Christopher M. Meissner have argued that inequality cannot be blamed for the 2008 financial crisis.[173] About 30% of the entire world's millionaire population resides in the United States (as of 2009).[174] The Economist Intelligence Unit estimated in 2008 that there were 16,600,000 millionaires in the U.S.[175] Furthermore, 34% of the world's billionaires are American (in 2011). According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, decreased progressiveness in capital gains taxes was the largest contributor to the increase in overall income inequality in the US from 1996 to 2006.[182] According to the Federal Reserve Board, in 2010 single Black and Hispanic women ages 18–64 had a median wealth of $100 and $120 respectively, excluding vehicles, while the median for single white women was $41,500. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States