Income Polarization in the United States

Ali Alichi, Kory Kantenga and Juan Sole

No 2016/121, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: 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 3½ percent—equivalent to more than one year of consumption.

Keywords: WP; income; income polarization; Middle Class; Middle-Income Class; Hollowing Out of the Middle Class; Inequality; Marginal Propensity to Consume; income share; household income; income series; incomemedian income; Personal income; Consumption; Income distribution; Income inequality; Disposable income; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2016-06-28
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=44031 (application/pdf)

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:imf:imfwpa:2016/121

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().