issue Inequality & Mobility

Equitable Growth supports research and policy analysis on how trends in economic inequality and mobility and changes in the economy have affected the concentration of wealth, income, and earnings, and how these distributional shifts have affected the promise of economic security and opportunity.

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During the mid-20th century, strong economic growth was broadly shared, as incomes increased and children could expect a better quality of life than their parents, though significant disparities across demographic groups remained. In recent decades, wealth, income, and earnings inequality have been rising and mobility declining, and demographic disparities persist. Better understanding these trends and their implications for economic growth will inform evidence-backed policies that improve growth and mobility for people across incomes, regions, and demographic groups.

Featured Research

In Conversation

In Conversation with Miles Corak

Inequality & Mobility
report

U.S. economic mobility trends and outcomes

Inequality & Mobility
In Conversation

In conversation with Sasha Killewald

Inequality & Mobility
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GDP 2.0: Measuring who prospers when the U.S. economy grows

Inequality & Mobility
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Stratification economics: What it is and how it advances our understanding of inequality

Inequality & Mobility
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Six charts that explain how inequality in the United States changed over the past 20 years

Inequality & Mobility
TOPICS: 1
TOPICS: GDP 2.0

Explore Content in Inequality & Mobility2537

Reset
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Voting rights equal economic progress: The Voting Rights Act and U.S. economic inequality

Inequality & MobilityLabor
working paper

The Effect of Political Power on Labor Market Inequality: Evidence from the 1965 Voting Rights Act

Inequality & MobilityLabor
Expert Focus

Expert Focus: The consequences of economic inequality among Latinx groups in the United States

Tax & MacroeconomicsInequality & MobilityLabor
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Can policymakers reverse the unequal decline in middle-age U.S. homeownership rates?

Tax & MacroeconomicsInequality & MobilityFamilies
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Equitable Growth’s Household Pulse graphs: September 16–28 Edition

Inequality & Mobility
Coronavirus Recession

Policy prescriptions for the flawed and unequal retirement savings systems that perpetuate U.S. economic inequality

Inequality & MobilityFamilies
Coronavirus Recession

New wealth data show that the economic expansion after the Great Recession was a wealthless recovery for many U.S. households

Inequality & Mobility
Coronavirus Recession

What the coronavirus recession means for U.S. public-sector employment

Inequality & MobilityLabor
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Equitable Growth’s household pulse graphs: September 2–14 edition

Inequality & Mobility
Coronavirus Recession

Structural racism and the coronavirus recession highlight why more and better U.S. data need to be widely disaggregated by race and ethnicity

Inequality & Mobility
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The hidden costs of stock-market-first U.S. economic policies

Inequality & MobilityFamiliesTax & Macroeconomics
Coronavirus Recession

Main Street’s workers, families, and small businesses are now suffering as Wall Street prospers from policies to fight the coronavirus recession

CompetitionTax & MacroeconomicsInequality & Mobility

Experts on the issue

Grantee

Heather Sarsons

University of Chicago

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Grantee

Katherine Thomas

New York University

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Guest Author

Naomi Zewde

University of California, Los Angels

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Grantee

Joan Williams

University of California, Hastings College of Law

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Grantee

Fenaba Addo

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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