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
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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 & Mobility2577

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Skill and spatial mismatch in the energy transition

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The Highway to Displacement: Interstate 10 and Black Communities in New Orleans

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The Distributional Effects of Firm Productivity Changes: Evidence from U.S. Linked Worker-Owner Data

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The Effect of Wealth on Descendants of the Enslaved

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The Effects of Participating in Multiple Safety Net Programs on Family Well-Being

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Worker Led Lawsuits: The Effects of California’s Private Attorney Generals Act

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Causes and Consequences of Incomplete Unemployment Insurance Take-Up

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Evaluating the Labor Market Effects of Short-Time Compensation in California

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New labor market data suggest that U.S. wage growth may be cooling too much

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New federal heat standard will protect U.S. workers from the ill effects of high temperatures amid intensifying climate change

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New federal heat standard offers novel distributional analysis to determine which workers benefit and how

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The new Labor Department overtime rule is a win for workers—and good policy, too

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Experts on the issue

Grantee

Rafael Becerril Arreola

University of South Carolina

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Grantee

Fenaba Addo

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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Grantee

Janet Xu

Harvard University

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Guest Author

Kreg Steven Brown

Equitable Growth

Former Director of Economic Mobility Policy

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Guest Author

Dania Francis

University of Massachusetts, Boston

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