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The Growth of Household Income Inequality

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 12:25 pm
by 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.

Re: The Growth of Household Income Inequality

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 1:06 pm
by 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?

Re: The Growth of Household Income Inequality

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 2:08 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
It worked if you had a good match though.

Re: The Growth of Household Income Inequality

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:11 pm
by 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

Re: The Growth of Household Income Inequality

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:24 pm
by rubato
Image


It's called 'selective advantage':

Image

And it is wrong.

yrs,
rubato