Wealth Gap Increasing

A new University of Michigan study shows the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The poorest ten percent of families actually had a negative net worth---more liabilities than assets. The poorest 5 percent of American households had a negative net worth of a little more than $1,000 in 1984, compared to nearly $9,000 in 2005.

Over the last 20 years, the net worth of the top two percentile of American families nearly doubled, from $1,071,000 in 1984 to $2,100,500 in 2005.