“It turns out the rich have suffered more than you,” concluded Fox Business host Stuart Varney, after a new analysis found income inequality hasn't risen since the financial crisis. 

According to new analysis from economist Stephen J. Rose of George Washington University, existing data points reveal that income inequality has not actually risen since the recession, due in part to income losses incurred by the wealthiest one percent during the financial crisis. As The New York Times explained on February 17, though income inequality is still enormously high:

[T]he crisis, which ran roughly from 2007 to 2010, reduced the pretax incomes of the wealthiest Americans more than the incomes of any group. The wealthy have indeed received the bulk of the gains since the recovery began, but they still haven't recovered their losses. Meanwhile, the steps that the federal government took in response to the crisis, including tax cuts and benefit increases, have mostly helped the nonwealthy.

Of course, income inequality is still at historically troubling rates, and could potential even worsen, as the Times repeatedly noted. 

But Fox Business' Varney had a much different takeaway from the report. On the February 17 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Varney cited the report to argue the recession hurt the rich more than others, saying, “The rich took it on the chin, everyone else took it on the chin, but not as badly.” A data point for his argument was “for the very, very wealthiest people ... their income went from $39 million in 07 to 29 million in 2013.” Though Varney acknowledged that income losses are felt more strongly by those with less wealth, he claimed that “government programs” made it so the lower and middle classes “didn't suffer quite as much as that one percent.” He concluded, “It turns out, the rich have suffered more than you.”