Walmart heirs have as much wealth as the bottom 41 percent of Americans combined, new study says
A protest against a planned Wal-Mart is seen Teotihuacan, Mexico State, in October, 2004.
The heirs to the Walmart fortune have as much wealth as almost half of Americans, a new analysis has found. The study, conducted by Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute, found that the value of the Walton family fortune grew to 89.5 billion in 2010, which is equal to the worth of 41.5 percent of the poorest American families, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Previous research found that in 2007, the Walton family had as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of American families, according to an analysis by labor economist Sylvia Allegretto.
More from GlobalPost: When the BRICs crumble
But between 2007 and 2010, that figure changed. The average American family fortune declined during that time period from $126,000 to $77,000, Mother Jones reported. Meanwhile, in that same time span, the Walton family fortune grew from $73.3 billion to $89.5 billion, Bivens' research found.
"In short, it would still take a city’s worth of families with the overall median wealth to match the Walton family’s net worth," Bivens writes.