That graph is terrible and hard to decipher: from it alone I would not be able to say that there's any indication of a significant increase in real income for the poor.

OK that's a fair point. But suppose instead I said, "the percentage of the population living on less than $50k per year in real terms has dropped by about a quarter since 1971". Does the graph support that statement?

If you do use the graph as reference, it is actually more like the percentage dropped by ~ 11.5% (this is by counting out the cumulative percentage represented by each bar)- which is not at all what you would eyeball it at. Like I said, really bad graph to showcase anything.

> 11.5%...which is not at all what you would eyeball it at.

I don't understand this point.

Here is the same graph with 3 areas shaded: http://imgur.com/a/xco37

It looks to me like Area A is about a quarter of area B and about an eighth of Area C. Isn't that about what most people would eyeball it at?