Income Inequality In The United States

Could you imagine a world where there was equality in every aspect of life, including jobs, statuses, social aspects, etc.? Well, it’s not very easy to picture this idea because our society has experienced such inequality over the course of many centuries. One of the biggest areas where we see inequality, is through income.

Throughout our history, we have experienced this income inequality in great amounts; and in many different forms. One big element that has impacted income inequality includes education and wealth. Due to education being a crucial way to break away from poverty and acquire fiscal independence, expanding entry to wealth, could determine rising access to opportunity, notably for minorities. For example, if you were to look at children who live in areas where a great amount of poverty exists, such as Detroit; and then compare them to children who live in a city where a lot more wealth exists, such as Scottsdale, Arizona, you would see a greater amount of students moving onto colleges and graduating with degrees in Scottsdale, rather than Detroit. This is partially due to the fact that children in Scottsdale have more access to wealth, than those in cities like Detroit, and other cities full of poverty.

Also, Adolescents from high-wealth households are much more probable to complete at minimum two years of college than those from low-wealth families. For instance, take a college such as Stanford, where their average tuition is $46,320. Families who are considered “high-wealth families,” have better chances of being able to afford such tuition, meaning children from these families are more likely to actually complete two or more years at a college like Stanford. However, if you were to take someone from a low-income family, they would most likely not be able to even pay one year of tuition at Stanford. Also, most low-wealth families include those of minorities, which typically include African Americans and Latinos. Now, the population of African Americans and Latinos combined at Stanford only make up 15.2% of the whole population of 16,000 students. Lastly, Wealth can furthermore purchase educational accomplishment through more books, mentors, schools, etc. In schools, some of the most important factors for students’ education depends on books, tutors, etc. When schools don’t have enough books and resources for students, it creates a harder environment for students to excel and become more successful in their school life. Without these resources, teachers than have to come up with other ways to teach their students, which typically cost them more time, effort, and money.

Discrimination is another factor that plays a role in income inequality here in our country. Based off research, in 2015, the racial gap was at 26.7%, with whites taking home on average, $25.22 an hour, compared to $18.49 for blacks. The gap is even more wide for young black women and black male college graduates. This right here shows how much discrimination there is in our employment system. There are many jobs where you see very little diversity, especially jobs that disperse greater income. For example, jobs in the legal system such as lawyers, judges, etc have a greater population of Caucasians, compared to those of African Americans. In the legal system, workers make a great amount of income, and so with very little diversity, you can see the racial gap of income that is being experienced. Black households also obtain far fewer connections to tax-advantaged forms of savings, as a result of an extended history of employment bigotry and other prejudiced procedures. This is because there are far less blacks who are homeowners compared to whites, which is a result in mortgage market discrimination. Owning a home is one way that you can gain access to the savings and tax benefits, as mentioned above. This also ties into the continual labor discrimination, which doesn’t allow as much access to advantageous employment opportunities for blacks.

Therefore, African Americans have less connections to stable jobs, fair wages, and tax-advantaged forms of savings, which all worsen the detrimental cycle of income inequality. One last saddening factor that impacts our income inequality consists of worker’s ability and monopoly power. The most prosperous 0.1% of American families possess as much wealth as the lower 90% of all American families together. This means that out of all American families, the wealth is practically only owned by the rich. It’s kind of like sharing a cookie with people. In this case, the richest families would each get a whole box of cookies to themselves, but the other 90% of American families would all have to share a box amongst each other.

In addition, between 1979 and 2007, the wealthiest 1% acquired 53.9% of all income advancement. Therefore, the rich basically has all power when it comes to receiving income. Those who are rich, receive the most income and get to earn the highest income, whereas everyone else basically has to share what is left after the rich receive all of their income. Finally, Changes in the requirement of skills, compelled by technology developments, globalization, population, etc., have heightened wage inequality. This factor tells us that with more technology now, many jobs are cutting off employees and not paying them as much because they are choosing to have technology do their work instead. Also, as far as the demand for skills, some jobs are hiring people who only have certain skills in which typically are skills learned at a higher education. This creates inequality because some citizens are unable to personally go to college (higher education), but yet they may even share the same, or even more skills than someone who has received a degree. However, many jobs won’t even personally look into the skill set of someone, but they rather just look at a piece of paper, stating that someone earned a degree in college.

Throughout our history, we have experienced this income inequality in great amounts; and in many different forms. There are many factors that contribute to income inequality. Many of these factors are very problematic and hurt many families in our country; financially and emotionally. These things are very hard to overcome for many families here in the US and we continuously see too many individuals struggle to make it due to income inequality. Hopefully in the near future, we will see more changes towards fixing some of these problems, and we can become closer together, as a whole.