Income Inequality Essay

Inequality exists around us. One of the inequalities is the income received by a person or member of a family. This income includes wages, salaries, pensions, and interest derived from assets. Income inequality refers to the various income within a given population. This inequality is especially high in the United States.

In the United States, high standard of living is not equally shared with in the Americans. The 1970s and 1990s was period where economic inequality began to grow. Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at UC Berkeley has been doing a research for the U.S. income inequality. He states that there has been an increase since the 1970s, and has reached levels that have not been seen since 1928. “In 1928, the top 1% of families received 23.9% of all pretax income, while the bottom 90% received 50.7%. But the Depression and World War II dramatically reshaped the nation’s income distribution, by 1944 the top 1%’s share was down to 11.3%, while the bottom 90% were receiving 67.5%, levels that would remain more or less constant for the next three decades. But starting in the mid- to late 1970s, the uppermost percent income share began rising dramatically, while that of the bottom 90% started to fall.”(DeSilver) Ever since then, economic inequality continues to increase, especially in the last three decades.

The way in which governments can examine inequality is through the use of a Lorenz curve. This Lorenz curve indicates that

Income inequality describes the extent to which income is distributed unevenly among residents of an area. High levels of inequality indicate that a small number of people receive most of the total income, and that most people receive only a small share of the total. There are many advantages and disadvantages associated with the inequitable distribution of income.

Domestic inequality is most commonly measured using the Gini coefficient that varies between 1 and 0. A coefficient of 1 implies inequality is

First we must define what exactly income inequality really is and that is according to Definition of ‘Income Inequality’ (2015) said to be unequal income distributed to household or individual across the various participants in an economy. Income inequality is often presented as the percentage of income to a percentage of population. For example,

Income and wealth inequality refers to the degree to which income is unevenly distributed among people in an economy. The share of total income received by different groups measures inequality, this visually represented in the Lorenz curve. The line of perfect equality bisects the graph with the percentage of income

The highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.

Gini coefficient, as a dependent variable, is used to measure income inequality for grouped household income. It is calculated across the grouped sixteen using census data for 1989, 1999,

Income inequality has been a major concern around the world, and it mainly links to how economic metrics are distributed among individuals in a country. Economists generally categorise these metrics in wealth, income and consumption. Wilkinson and Picket (2009) showed in their studies that inequality has drawbacks that lead to social problems. This is because income inequality and wealth concentration can hinder or delay long term growth. In 2011, International Monetary Fund economists showed that less income inequality increased the duration of countries’ economic growth spells more than free trade, low government corruption, foreign investment or low foreign debt (Berg and Ostry, 2011).

income - share data from more then 20 countries to calculate what percent of income goes to the

One of the social issues concerning power, status, and class in American society today is income inequality. The income gap between the social classes has increased drastically throughout the last few decades, creating a significant gap between the wealthy and the poor. This gap has become so large that the middle class has nearly diminished, creating a social class comprised of the rich and the poor. The significant gap between the two social classes is unhealthy for the economy because it provides too much power in the hands of those with high social status.

Income inequality has affected American citizens ever since the American Dream came to existence. The American Dream is centered around the concept of working hard and earning enough money to support a family, own a home, send children to college, and invest for retirement. Economic gains in income are one of the only possible ways to achieve enough wealth to fulfill the dream. Unfortunately, many people cannot achieve this dream due to low income. Income inequality refers to the uneven distribution of income and wealth between the social classes of American citizens. The United States has often experienced a rise in inequality as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, increasing the unstable gap between the two classes. The

There is a number of ways of measuring income inequality. A commonly used method is the Gini coefficient, which describes the inequality in income distribution in one number. It ranges from 0 to 1 and the higher value means the higher inequality. According to this method, it is clear that the income inequality in the UK rose rapidly in the 1980s since the Gini coefficient increased from 0.25 in 1979 to 0.34 in 1991. Starting from the 1990s, the inequality fluctuated and rose slowly peaking in 2007-2008, when the Gini coefficient took value of 0.36. Moreover, over the period of three decades, the income share of the top 1% income earners in the UK, which was 6.7% in 1981, almost doubled reaching 12.9% in the year 2011. A range of reasons used

Furthermore, inequality of income distribution ratio in Table 4, which indicates total disposable income ratio received by the 20% of the population with the highest income to that received by the 20% of the population with the lowest income (Eurostat, 2016a), shows stable rate of inequality around 3.5% since 2005.