Income Inequality in America: A Reference Handbook

This book provides a one-stop resource for understanding the full dimensions of income inequality in the United States, including chief socioeconomic drivers of inequality and proposals to reduce the widening gap between rich and poor in America.

Carefully researched and scrupulously nonpartisan, this resource examines the history and current state of income inequality in the United States, with a particular focus on key issues, events, and political/economic philosophies relevant to the enduring divide between rich and poor in America. One of the most valuable aspects of the book is that it surveys the complex history of income inequality in an easy-to-understand fashion that helps readers identify and assess the ways in which income inequality shapes many aspects of modern American society. The book is even-handed in its treatment of the academic and policy debates over the causes, consequences, and appropriate response to today’s growing inequality.

In addition, this resource provides insights into the financial underpinnings of debt and wealth and capitalism and how all of those factors perpetuate themselves. It also examines problems and challenges related to child care, education, transportation, housing, and saving for retirement that hamper so many poor people in their efforts to lift their households out of poverty.

Stacey M. Jones, PhD, is a senior instructor in the department of economics of the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University.

Robert S. Rycroft, PhD, is professor of economics at the University of Mary Washington.