United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality

Over the past 75 years, household income in the United States has increased substantially. Still, by some measures, income inequality has increased as well. This has been the subject of contested public policy and political discourse. The question still stands: How can we better articulate the nuanced changes in American incomes? It is difficult to have conversations about income inequality without an agreed-upon set of terms, metrics, and concepts.

United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality, edited by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, examines the trends in income growth in the United States and explores various measures of income, including market, post-tax, and post-transfer income. Within each chapter, distinguished experts explain how income and wealth--and the way we measure them--have changed in the United States, which demographic groups have benefited from these changes, and how mobility has changed over time and over generations. Specific chapters explain the roles of gender and race. The resulting book is relevant to modern international policy, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and addresses what can be done to increase economic mobility in the United States.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Macroeconomic Policy and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the US Department of the Treasury. She was previously Senior Fellow and Director of Economics 21 at Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Introduction, Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Chapter 1: The Ins and Outs of Measuring Income Inequality in the United States, Steven Rose
Chapter 2: Income and Wealth Inequality: Evidence and Policy Implications, Emmanuel Saez
Chapter 3: Improving Economic Opportunity in the United States, Jared Bernstein
Chapter 4: Income Growth and its Distribution from Eisenhower to Obama: The Growing Importance of In-Kind Transfers (1959-2016), James Elwell, Kevin Corinth, and Richard V. Burkhauser
Chapter 5: Top Income Shares and the Difficulties of Using Tax Data, Gerald Auten and David Splinter
Chapter 6: The Effects of the Movement of Women into the Workforce on Income Trends, Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Beila Leboeuf
Chapter 7: Explaining Race and Gender Wage Gaps, June O'Neill and Dave O'Neill
Chapter 8: The Distribution of Wealth in America, 1983-2013, John C. Weicher
Chapter 9: Public Opinion on Inequality, Karlyn Bowman and Eleanor O'Neil
Chapter 10: Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies, Edward Conard