Income Inequality in the US

Posted on November 16, 2012 by townsend

• Michigan income gap growth report: Rich didn’t get richer, but poor got poorer, By Jonathan Oosting, November 16, 2012, mlive.com: “The rich didn’t get any richer in Michigan between 1998 and 2007, but the state’s income gap continued to grow as middle- and low-income families got poorer, according to a new report released Thursday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. Most Michigan households saw average incomes drop in that decade, but the report indicates that the state’s poorest families were hardest hit by the economic downturn…”
• Study: NM income inequality continues to grow, By Russell Contreras (AP), November 14, 2012, Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “The gap between wealthy households and low-income families continues to grow in New Mexico, and the difference between their incomes is now the largest in the nation, according to a study released Wednesday. From 2008 to 2010, the richest 5 percent of households had average incomes that were nearly 17 times higher than the bottom 20 percent of households, according to the report from the Washington, D.C.-based groups Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. That’s a jump from two years earlier, when the difference was around 14 times. In addition, household income for the richest 20 percent of households in New Mexico was 9.9 times greater than for the poorest 20 percent, the report said. That’s the highest ratio in the nation…”
• Gap between rich and poor Ohioans widens, By Cornelius Frolik, November 15, 2012, Dayton Daily News: “The economic gap between the richest and poorest households in Ohio has widened in the last three decades, because the incomes of the poor have stagnated while the incomes of rich have soared, according to a national report released on Thursday.  The richest 5 percent of households in Ohio on average earn almost 11 times as much income as the poorest 20 percent, according to the report by the Center on Budget Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The income disparity is a product of the richest households seeing their incomes grow by 85 percent between the peak economic years of the late 1970s and the mid-2000s, while the poorest saw no gains…”