Income inequalities and poverty in the USA

Jan Adam

Politická ekonomie, 2000, vol. 2000, issue 4

Abstract: This article examines the main reasons for the widening of income inequalities: tax cuts in the 1980s, growing wage inequalities, growing inequalities from income investment gains, changes in the demographic composition of the American population. Changes in the structure of employment, foreign trade, technological progress, dramatic increases in the earnings of a small segment of the population, and the decline of the influence of trade unions - all these factors contributed to the widening of wage differentials. Wealth is distributed more unevenly than incomes. The USA has the highest poverty rate among developed countries. Female-headed families make up the majority of the poor. A small proportion of full-time workers are also poor. The poverty rate of children, especially of minorities, is high. The consequences of extreme inequalities are examined.

Keywords: income inequalities; unequal distribution of wealth; child poverty; working poor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://polek.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.polek.162.html (text/html)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:prg:jnlpol:v:2000:y:2000:i:4:id:162

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Redakce Politické ekonomie, Vysoká škola ekonomická, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Praha 3
http://polek.vse.cz

DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.162

Access Statistics for this article

Politická ekonomie is currently edited by Jiřina Bulisová

More articles in Politická ekonomie from Prague University of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stanislav Vojir ().