{"id":39529,"date":"2011-09-17T10:59:31","date_gmt":"2011-09-17T15:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media.lclark.edu\/content\/hart-landsberg\/2011\/09\/15\/troubling-trends\/"},"modified":"2012-02-20T16:11:04","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T21:11:04","slug":"troubling-trends-income-inequality-and-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/09\/17\/troubling-trends-income-inequality-and-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Troubling Trends: Income Inequality and Poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Census Bureau just published new data<\/a> revealing trends in\u00a0living standards as of\u00a02010.\u00a0 The trends are troubling to say the least. Median household income (adjusted for inflation) fell to $49,445<\/a>.\u00a0 That means that the median household now earns less than it did a decade ago.\u00a0 This marks the first decade since the Great Depression without an increase in real median income.<\/p>\n

According to Lawrence Katz<\/a>, a labor expert and Harvard economist:<\/p>\n

This is truly a lost decade.\u00a0 We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we\u2019re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The percentage of Americans living in poverty hit 15.1 percent, the highest percentage since 1993.\u00a0 There are now 46.2 million people living below the poverty line, the greatest number\u00a0ever recorded by the Census Bureau. Child poverty<\/a> stood at\u00a022 percent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Things are unlikely to get better this year.\u00a0\u00a0State and local governments are slashing employment and programs and\u00a0the federal government is now moving into\u00a0cutting mode itself.<\/p>\n

This depressing situation is not simply a recession phenomenon.\u00a0 As the New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a>, the expansion period of 2001 to 2007 \u201cwas the first… on record where the level of poverty was deeper, and median income of working-age people was lower, at the end than at the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, while the great majority of people are struggling, a small minority have been doing very well.\u00a0 One consequence, as the chart below<\/a> highlights, is a strong growth in inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient with higher numbers reflecting greater inequality).\u00a0 As I noted in a previous post<\/a>, over the years 2002 to 2007, the top 1% of households captured 58% of all the income generated.<\/p>\n

\"inequality-2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In brief, there is a small minority that is doing very well and a great majority that is struggling, with a significant number in free fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Census Bureau just published new data revealing trends in\u00a0living standards as of\u00a02010.\u00a0 The trends are troubling to say the least.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nMedian household income (adjusted for inflation) fell to $49,445 (see below).\u00a0 That means that the median household now earns less than it did a decade ago.\u00a0 This marks the first decade since the Great Depression […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,29,36,12498,304],"class_list":["post-39529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39529"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45104,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39529\/revisions\/45104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}