Income inequality continues to rise
/Tired of living paycheck to paycheck, not able to put aside any savings for a rainy day or the future? Or worse, not having a full-time job for years, struggling through unemployment, part-time, and/or temporary jobs and having to rely on family, community or government help to get by? At the same time, the news is filled with stories of how the stock market is at record highs and about billionaires’ cash is buying elections?
Year after year, the gap between the rich and almost everyone else continues to grow. One common measure of income inequality, called the Gini index, has been rising since 1974, showing that inequality of income rose more than 30% by 2012. In the last 15 years, the growing inequality has meant that the median, or typical, household income has fallen from a peak of $56,080 in 1999 to only $51,017 in 2012, a decline of more than 9%, even though the economy grew 28% during this period. During this same period the number of Americans who fell below the official poverty line (which, at $18,500 for a family of three, is way too low) rose from less than 12% to 15% of the population.
