Income Inequality in the US

Posted on October 27, 2011 by townsend

• Utah has nation’s lowest ‘income inequality’, By Lee Davidson, October 26, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “More than any other Americans, Utahns live among neighbors whose incomes are similar to their own. The rich live with the rich, and the poor with the poor. But the overall range of Utahns’ household incomes is relatively narrow, too, with comparatively few who are exceptionally high- or low-income. That’s according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau looking at ‘neighborhood income inequality’ between 2005 and 2009…”
• Income inequality lower than average in NW, says Census report, By Jessica Robinson, October 26, 2011, Oregon Public Broadcasting: “New numbers show the gap between the rich and poor has grown across the nation. But income inequality in the Northwest is lower than the national level. That’s according to an analysis released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Correspondent Jessica Robinson has more. The report is based on survey data collected between 2005 and 2009 — three years of economic growth, plus two years of recession. It uses three different measurements. And in all of them, Oregon, Idaho and Washington have lower-than-average levels of income inequality. That is, the spread between high wage earners and low wage earners…”
• Top earners doubled share of nation’s income, study finds, By Robert Pear, October 25, 2011, New York Times: “The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt. In addition, the report said, government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income…”
• The rich are getting richer, U.S. study says, By Jim Puzzanghera, October 27, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “The rich got richer over the last three decades – and the very rich got very much richer – according to a new government study. The top 1% of households saw their after-tax incomes grow by 275% from 1979 to 2007, said the study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That was more than quadruple the growth of the rest of the top 20% of the population during that period. Meanwhile, income for the 60% of households that make up the middle of the income scale increased by slightly less than 40%, the study found. The poor – the 20% of the population with the lowest incomes – saw just an 18% increase…”