The Growth of Household Income Inequality

[dgs49]

For those who care to know the facts.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/ ... page/full/



Quote:

Looking at where all the data in these three charts intersect and overlap, What we find is that since 1960, the level of income inequality for U.S. individuals as measured by the "fine" Gini index is nearly constant, but has increased significantly for U.S. households. What has changed over that time is the composition of U.S. households, with a steady increase in the percentage of single person households.

Without a corresponding increase in the measured income inequality for U.S. individuals, the increase in the measured income inequality for U.S. households has been almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of single person households over time.

So income inequality among U.S. households isn't increasing because the rich are getting richer. That means that policies intended to right this situation by going after the rich in the name of "fairness" are guaranteed to fail, because the real cause of the increase in income inequality among U.S. households over time is something that cannot be fixed by such actions.

[Crackpot]

YOu do realize that it wasn't so long ago that a whole family was expected to live on a singe income don't you?

[MajGenl.Meade]

It worked if you had a good match though.

[rubato]

Average income for U.S. males has been flat since 1975 (gone down slightly, in fact). Household income has gone up because women entered the workforce in much larger numbers and women's wages went up as more of them had more years of experience and as political pressure made employers pay them closer to men's wages.* More households have TWO incomes now (sometimes more) than before.

Inequality has exploded since the tax code was changed to selectively favor high-earners.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

It's called 'selective advantage':



And it is wrong.

yrs,
rubato