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Article: On the Evolution of Income Inequality in the United States
- Article from:
- Economic Quarterly - Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
- Article date:
- April 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Spring 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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The recent rise in income inequality in the United States has received considerable attention in policy debates.1 This article discusses individual income inequality trends. In doing so, we summarize results presented in existing work. As in previous studies, the article shows that income inequality has increased since the 1960s-see, for example, DÃaz-Giménez et al. (2002), Eckstein and Nagypal (2004),Weinberg and Steelman (2005), and Katz, Autor, and Kearney (2007). Furthermore, our article documents periods characterized by a decline in real income for lower income groups.
Figure 1 shows that between 1975 and 2002, only labor income in the top 10 percent of the income distribution ...