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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Tag: Income gap

US Income Gap

A bigger economic pie, but a smaller slice for half of the U.S., By Patricia Cohen, December 6, 2016, New York Times: “Even with all the setbacks from recessions, burst bubbles and vanishing industries, the United States has still pumped out breathtaking riches over the last three and half decades.  The real economy more than doubled in size; the government now uses a substantial share of that bounty to hand over as much as $5 trillion to help working families, older people, disabled and unemployed people pay for a home, visit a doctor and put their children through school.  Yet for half of all Americans, their share of the total economic pie has shrunk significantly, new research has found…”

Black-White Income Gap

The (very) few places with no black-white income gap, By Tim Henderson, November 10, 2016, Stateline: “The income gap between black and white households has grown since 2000 and only worsened since the recession.  In 2015, the median income for black households was 59.5 percent of that for whites, or $36,544 to $61,394. That’s a greater gap than at the end of the recession in 2009, when black income was 61.2 percent of white income.  Yet, a tiny number of places exist where black household income is greater than that of whites. Of the 364 large U.S. counties whose populations are at least 5 percent black, there are seven, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data for 2010-14…”