Gilded Age growth enriched workers absolutely while enriching the top disproportionately.

Evidence

Measured materially, the standard of living in the United States improved substantially during the half century after the close of the Civil War. Per capita wealth increased by some 60 percent, and real per capita GNP rose 133 percent, even as the population swelled with an influx of poor immigrants. From 1871 to 1913 the expansion of the American economy averaged 4.3 percent annually. … These gains were not spread evenly, either across social classes or across time. The gap between rich and poor, and even the gap between skilled and unskilled laborers, widened, in the words of historian Mark Wahlgren Summers, “in work experience, in their satisfaction with American society, in pay scales and control of their own lives.” In 1896 Charles B. Spaur estimated that 1 percent of the population owned more than half of all national wealth, while the 44 percent of families at the bottom owned only 1.2 percent. … Despite the growing maldistribution of well-being, however, the real income and standard of living of American workers did rise significantly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1306

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Gilded Age elites spent fortunes on display while most Americans earned under $1,200 yearly. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 440

Broader Connections

• Gilded Age elites spent fortunes on display while most Americans earned under $1,200 yearly. #qualifies (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 440