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

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Why the Iran war is bad for U.S. economic growth

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Federal policymakers can ensure Trump accounts do not exacerbate inequality in the United States

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Research-based perspectives on the connection between economic policy and rising support for authoritarian populism

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Analyzing recent U.S. economic policies using Equitable Growth’s Inequality Tracker

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Factsheet: U.S. economic mobility and policies to increase upward mobility

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

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TOPICS: 1
TOPICS: GDP 2.0

Explore Content in Inequality & Mobility2796

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Impact of the great rise in finance on resource allocation and employment

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The impact of inequality on young workers’ career progression

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Student loans: vehicle of opportunity or trojan horse?

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Intragenerational income mobility in the United States

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The consequences of tougher sentencing and the prison boom: Recidivism, human capital accumulation, and intergenerational effects

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Political inequality and financial rulemaking: A collaborative empirical project for the production of data

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Substitution and the skill premium

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Long-run earnings mobility and earnings inequality: Evidence from SIPP linked administrative earnings data

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State legislative political polarization and income inequality in the United States

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Minority entrepreneurship and economic disparities: Revisited from a development perspective

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Wealth, income, and consumption: a microeconomic approach to a macroeconomic question

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From economic growth to decent jobs and middle class prosperity? Post-1979 U.S. employment performance in international perspective

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Experts on the issue

Grantee

E. Mark Curtis

Wake Forest University

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Grantee

Andrew Baker

University of California, Berkeley

Assistant Professor

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Grantee

Jacob Bastian

Rutgers University

Assistant Professor

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Grantee

Heather Sarsons

University of Chicago

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Guest Author

Matto Mildenberger

University of California, Santa Barbara

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