The Distribution of Incomes in the United States

The Distribution of Incomes in the United States PDF Author: Frank Hatch Streightoff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Income
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income

The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030931710X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
The U.S. population is aging. Social Security projections suggest that between 2013 and 2050, the population aged 65 and over will almost double, from 45 million to 86 million. One key driver of population aging is ongoing increases in life expectancy. Average U.S. life expectancy was 67 years for males and 73 years for females five decades ago; the averages are now 76 and 81, respectively. It has long been the case that better-educated, higher-income people enjoy longer life expectancies than less-educated, lower-income people. The causes include early life conditions, behavioral factors (such as nutrition, exercise, and smoking behaviors), stress, and access to health care services, all of which can vary across education and income. Our major entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income - have come to deliver disproportionately larger lifetime benefits to higher-income people because, on average, they are increasingly collecting those benefits over more years than others. This report studies the impact the growing gap in life expectancy has on the present value of lifetime benefits that people with higher or lower earnings will receive from major entitlement programs. The analysis presented in The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income goes beyond an examination of the existing literature by providing the first comprehensive estimates of how lifetime benefits are affected by the changing distribution of life expectancy. The report also explores, from a lifetime benefit perspective, how the growing gap in longevity affects traditional policy analyses of reforms to the nation's leading entitlement programs. This in-depth analysis of the economic impacts of the longevity gap will inform debate and assist decision makers, economists, and researchers.

Evil Geniuses

Evil Geniuses PDF Author: Kurt Andersen
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1984801368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When did America give up on fairness? The author of Fantasyland tells the epic history of how America decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get richer, and nothing should ever change—and charts a way back to the future. “Essential, absorbing . . . a graceful, authoritative guide . . . a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change.”—The New York Times Book Review During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope. Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,” among whom he includes himself. Only a writer with Andersen’s crackling energy, deep insight, and ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point, and show the way out of this man-made disaster.

Econophysics of Wealth Distributions

Econophysics of Wealth Distributions PDF Author: Arnab Chatterjee
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 884700389X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
We all know the hard fact: neither wealth nor income is ever uniform for us all. Justified or not, they are unevenly distributed; few are rich and many are poor! Investigations for more than hundred years and the recent availability of the income distribution data in the internet (made available by the finance ministries of various countries; from the tax return data of the income tax departments) have revealed some remarkable features. Irrespective of many differences in culture, history, language and, to some extent, the economic policies followed in different countries, the income distribution is seen to fol low a particular universal pattern. So does the wealth distribution. Barring an initial rise in population with income (or wealth; for the destitutes), the population decreases either exponentially or in a log-normal way for the ma jority of 'middle income' group, and it eventually decreases following a power law (Pareto law, following Vilfredo Pareto's observation in 1896) for the rich est 5-10 % of the population! This seems to be an universal feature - valid for most of the countries and civilizations; may be in ancient Egypt as well! Econophysicists tried to view this as a natural law for a statistical ma- body-dynamical market system, analogous to gases, liquids or solids: classical or quantum.

Distribution of Income by States in 1919

Distribution of Income by States in 1919 PDF Author: Oswald Whitman Knauth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Income
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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The Distribution of Wealth – Growing Inequality?

The Distribution of Wealth – Growing Inequality? PDF Author: Michael Schneider
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1783476443
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book answers a number of important questions about the distribution of wealth among people and the way that this distribution has changed over time. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the personal distribution of wealth from many dimensions: economic, statistical, ethical, political, sociological and legal. Using data from 21 countries, this book demonstrates how inequality in the distribution of wealth varies between different parts of the world and how it evolves, with particular emphasis on the claim that there has been a long-term and continued increase in inequality since the 1970s in most countries. It discusses alternative ways of measuring the degree of inequality, analyses Thomas Piketty's claim that society has become more unequal in recent decades, and assesses the relative importance of the various determinants of the distribution of wealth. The authors explain why the distribution of wealth is unequal, and discuss how it could be changed with alternative policies and the possible consequences of these policies for economic efficiency. The authors also compare the different distributions of wealth that are implied by alternative views of society. This is a valuable resource for students and academics in economics, political science and sociology seeking a state-of-the-art account of the theory and evidence surrounding inequality in the distribution of wealth.

United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality

United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality PDF Author: Diana Furchtgott-Roth
Publisher:
ISBN: 0197518192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
United States Trends in Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Well-Being analyzes economic trends, examines income inequality, and discusses what can be done to increase economic mobility today.

How Rich Is Too Rich?

How Rich Is Too Rich? PDF Author: Sidney Carroll
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 9780275936198
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
... a new twist on the eternal question of inequitable income distribution, though they focus on wealth (accumulated income) rather than income. The authors document the dramatic disparities in the distributions of income and wealth and describe the problems these cause. Their solution, the `alternative distribution system, is quite simple: tax inheritance rather than estates. Individuals could inherit up to $1 million tax free. Each succeeding million would be taxed at progressively higher rates. This plan, they argue, would force an estate to be distributed among more people and would cuase beneficiaries to use inheritances more `vigorously and creatively.' The authors do an excellent job of making obscure economic data understandable. Booklist A physicist and an economist, writing for a broad audience and using real--not theoretical--data, answer the age-old question: How rich is too rich? In the process, they suggest some practical solutions to the problem of excessive wealth. They outline a way to deal with the too rich that will also create a healthier economy. Merging a hundred years of economic theory and research on wealth and income distributions with anecdotal evidence, Herbert Inhaber and Sidney Carroll create a framework with which to evaluate proposals to redistribute great wealth and income. The authors set forth an Alternative Distribution System, based on the fact that much of the income of the well-off, that upper 3 percent of the United States population with incomes exceeding $110,000 per year, is due to wealth. The ADS, an inheritance plan, would bring the distribution of the lower 97 percent and the upper 3 percent closer together. It would allow a partial correction of the disparity while adding to the total fairness of our society. This very readable text is complemented by a dozen tables that illustrate The Power of Compound Interest, United States Income Distribution, The Estimated Size of the Domestic Underground Economy, and more. Inhaber and Carroll first describe the existence of an extremely unequal distribution of income and wealth, with enormous resources held by a small percentage of Americans at the top. Other chapters detail the law of income distribution, explain the difference between wealth and income, and explain previous theories of income and wealth distributions. In addition to defining and describing the rich, the authors devote a chapter to how the rich avoid income tax. The volume concludes with an examination of the Alternative Distribution System and how income would be altered by it. How Rich Is Too Rich? will enable the informed general reader to assess policies on wealth and income distribution that have been the subject of Congressional budget debates and best-selling books.

Top Incomes

Top Incomes PDF Author: A. B. Atkinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199286892
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 799

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Book Description
This volume brings together an exciting range of new studies of top incomes in a wide range of countries from around the world. The studies use data from income tax records to cast light on the dramatic changes that have taken place at the top of the income distribution. The results cover 22 countries and have a long time span, going back to 1875.

For Good Measure

For Good Measure PDF Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Today's leading economists weigh in with a new "dashboard" of metrics for measuring our economic and social health "What we measure affects what we do. If we focus only on material well-being—on, say, the production of goods, rather than on health, education, and the environment—we become distorted in the same way that these measures are distorted." —Joseph E. Stiglitz A consensus has emerged among key experts that our conventional economic measures are out of sync with how most people live their lives. GDP, they argue, is a poor and outmoded measure of our well-being. The global movement to move beyond GDP has attracted some of the world's leading economists, statisticians, and social thinkers who have worked collectively to articulate new approaches to measuring economic well-being and social progress. In the decade since the 2008 economic crisis, these experts have come together to determine what indicators can actually tell us about people's lives. In the first book of its kind, leading economists from around the world, including Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Elizabeth Beasely, Jacob Hacker, François Bourguignon, Nora Lustig, Alan B. Krueger, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, describe a range of fascinating metrics—from economic insecurity and environmental sustainability to inequality of opportunity and levels of trust and resilience—that can be used to supplement the simplistic measure of gross domestic product, providing a far more nuanced and accurate account of societal health and well-being. This groundbreaking volume is sure to provide a major source of ideas and inspiration for one of the most important intellectual movements of our time.