- U.S. wealth gap is widest in at least 30 years, study finds, By Patricia Cohen, December 17, 2014, New York Times: “The wealthy are getting wealthier. As for everyone else, no such luck. A report released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that the wealth gap between the country’s top 20 percent of earners and the rest of America had stretched to its widest point in at least three decades. Last year, the median net worth of upper-income families reached $639,400, nearly seven times as much of those in the middle, and nearly 70 times the level of those at the bottom of the income ladder…”
- Wealth gap in America widens to record level, report says, By Don Lee, December 17, 2014, Los Angeles Times: “The wealth gap between middle- and upper-income households has widened to the highest level on record, says a new report. Using the latest Federal Reserve data, the Pew Research Center said Wednesday that the median wealth for high-income families was $639,400 last year — up 7% from three years earlier on an inflation-adjusted basis. For middle-income families, the median wealth — that is, assets minus debts — stood at $96,500 last year, unchanged from 2010. The result is that the typical wealth of the nation’s upper-income households last year was nearly seven times that of middle-class ones…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty