Income Polarization in the United States
Income Polarization in the United States

Author: Ali Alichi

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2016-06-28

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 1475522509

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The paper uses a combination of micro-level datasets to document the rise of income polarization—what some have referred to as the “hollowing out” of the income distribution—in the United States, since the 1970s. While in the initial decades more middle-income households moved up, rather than down, the income ladder, since the turn of the current century, most of polarization has been towards lower incomes. This result is striking and in contrast with findings of other recent contributions. In addition, the paper finds evidence that, after conditioning on income and household characteristics, the marginal propensity to consume from permanent changes in income has somewhat fallen in recent years. We assess the potential impacts of these trends on private consumption. During 1998-2013, the rise in income polarization and lower marginal propensity to consume have suppressed the level of real consumption at the aggregate level, by about 31⁄2 percent—equivalent to more than one year of consumption.

Hollowing Out: The Channels of Income Polarization in the United States
Hollowing Out: The Channels of Income Polarization in the United States

Author: Ali Alichi

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2017-11-15

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 1484328299

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Data show that middle-income households have continued moving down, and less so up, the income distribution in the United States since the 1970s—a phenomenon that is often referred to as the polarization or “hollowing out” of the income distribution. While the level of income polarization is generally lower in the richer states (i.e., those with higher median household income levels), there have been wide variations in the changes in income polarization over time across states. The paper develops two indices to measure income polarization including a novel hollowing-out index. Another important contribution of the paper is to examine the proximate causes of income polarization. The econometric analysis is done at both state and household levels. The results suggest that technology, measured by job routinization, and international trade, measured by job offshoring, can fully explain the non-trend rise in income polarization, with broadly equal contributions. Household characteristics, including age, education, race, and gender have also been important drivers but with a net countervailing effect on income polarization. This is mainly thanks to the rising education level of households, which has led to better incomes.

Polarized America
Polarized America

Author: Nolan McCarty

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006-06-16

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0262134640

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An analysis of how the increasing polarization of American politics has been accompanied and accelerated by greater income inequality, rising immigration, and other social and economic changes.

Polarized America, second edition
Polarized America, second edition

Author: Nolan McCarty

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-02-26

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0262528622

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Updated analysis of how the increasing polarization of American politics has been accompanied and accelerated by greater income inequality. The idea of America as politically polarized—that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states—has become a cliché. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes—most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In this second edition of Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal use the latest data to examine the relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces. They find that inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality. Paul Krugman called the first edition of Polarized America “Important.... Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's happening to America.” The second edition has been thoroughly brought up to date. All statistical analyses, tables, and figures have been updated with data that run through 2012 or 2014, and the text has been revised to reflect the latest evidence. The chapter on campaign finance has been completely rewritten (with Adam Bonica as coauthor); the analysis shows that with so much “soft” money coming from very wealthy ideological extremists, there is even greater campaign contribution inequality than income inequality.

Inequality, Polarization and Poverty
Inequality, Polarization and Poverty

Author: Satya R. Chakravarty

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-07-25

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 0387792538

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This book provides a synthesis of some recent issues and an up-to-date treatment of some of the major important issues in distributional analysis that I have covered in my previous book Ethical Social Index Numbers, which was widely accepted by students, teachers, researchers and practitioners in the area. Wide coverage of on-going and advanced topics and their analytical, articulate and authoritative p- sentation make the book theoretically and methodologically quite contemporary and inclusive, and highly responsive to the practical problems of recent concern. Since many countries of the world are still characterized by high levels of income inequality, Chap. 1 analyzes the problems of income inequality measurement in detail. Poverty alleviation is an overriding goal of development and social policy. To formulate antipoverty policies, research on poverty has mostly focused on inco- based indices. In view of this, a substantive analysis of income-based poverty has been presented in Chap. 2. The subject of Chap. 3 is people’s perception about income inequality in terms of deprivation. Since polarization is of current concern to analysts and social decisi- makers, a discussion on polarization is presented in Chap. 4.

The Upswing
The Upswing

Author: Robert D. Putnam

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 198212914X

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From the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids, a “sweeping yet remarkably accessible” (The Wall Street Journal) analysis that “offers superb, often counterintuitive insights” (The New York Times) to demonstrate how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation. Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism—Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times. But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became—slowly, unevenly, but steadily—more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today’s disarray. In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I” society to a “We” society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.

Income Inequality
Income Inequality

Author: Janet C. Gornick

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-08-01

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 0804786755

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This state-of-the-art volume presents comparative, empirical research on a topic that has long preoccupied scholars, politicians, and everyday citizens: economic inequality. While income and wealth inequality across all populations is the primary focus, the contributions to this book pay special attention to the middle class, a segment often not addressed in inequality literature. Written by leading scholars in the field of economic inequality, all 17 chapters draw on microdata from the databases of LIS, an esteemed cross-national data center based in Luxembourg. Using LIS data to structure a comparative approach, the contributors paint a complex portrait of inequality across affluent countries at the beginning of the 21st century. The volume also trail-blazes new research into inequality in countries newly entering the LIS databases, including Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa.

Income Polarization/ the Shrinking Middle Class
Income Polarization/ the Shrinking Middle Class

Author: Basso Lee

Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing

Published: 2010-02

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9783838340098

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Over the last thirty years the American economy has changed in fundamental ways. Instead of the security and egalitarian economic gains foretold by the postwar era, income inequality and job insecurity have increased. Increasingly fluid, global borders are eroding the social pact between capital and labor and the move away from manufacturing and toward services employment produces jobs that provide vastly less security and benefits for a great many workers. In short, America is moving toward a new and postindustrial economy. Many people thrive in this new economy and many more are left fearful. But we know little about how this transformation will play out in the political arena.The individual-level anxiety accompanying America s transition to a postindustrial, globalized economy has not been explored in any systematic way. What is the nature of the relationship between perceptions of the postindustrial economy and political beliefs and opinions? It is to this question that this dissertation speaks.

Income Inequality, Polarization and Electoral Politics in the United States
Income Inequality, Polarization and Electoral Politics in the United States

Author: Andrew David Smith

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13:

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This paper uses data aggregated from a multitude of publicly available sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureaus of Labor Statistics and Economic Analysis; as well as the accessible repositories of economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Mark Frank to evaluate what relationship exists, if any, between income inequality and Presidential election results, at the state level, from 1972 to 2016. Isolating inequality by holding constant electorally predictive and sociological variables including unemployment and poverty rates, median household income, state GDP per capita change, population density and urban population, race, education and religiosity; as well as year and state fixed effects, I found that a statistically and substantively significant relationship exists between the Gini coefficient and partisan electoral preference, using both an ordinary least squares regression and more tellingly, a fixed effects regression. My analysis suggests that a 1% increase in a state's Gini coefficient is associated with an increase in the Democratic two-party vote share of 0.119%, holding all other factors in the regression constant. Based on my empirical results and again controlling for fixed effects, I project a 2020 Electoral College Map in which Democrats take back control of the Executive Branch, winning 369 of 538 electoral votes.

Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality
Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality

Author: Ms.Era Dabla-Norris

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2015-06-15

Total Pages: 39

ISBN-13: 1513547437

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This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.