Wealth Inequality Research Paper

For many foreigners, the U.S. has been seen as the “land of opportunity”, where people from around the world are welcome to start a new life and take their chances at making it rich. Even our own citizens are taught from a young age that our country is full of opportunities along with the concept of “upward mobility”, where anyone no matter what class background has the chance to become successful if they work hard enough. But in the recent decade with the Great Recession and the Occupy Wall Street movement, many have begun to question this common belief: if this is indeed the land of opportunity, why are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? It’s a surprising truth that during recent years the so-called “wealth gap” has indeed

has some of the worst inequality. When looking at poverty levels, income gaps, and wealth owned by the rich, sources show the U.S. always scores poorly compared to other developed countries. When measuring inequality, researchers use the gini coefficient, where 0 means that everyone has the same income and 1 means that one person has all the income. According to evidence presented by the online database OECD.org, when looking at inequality of disposable income the U.S. scores fourth out of all developing countries. When looking at the gap in income between the richest 10 percent and the poorest 10 percent, the richest 10 percent in 16 times higher than that of the poorest (OECD). The fact that the U.S. has some of the worst inequality compared to the rest of the world is quite surprising, but at the same time it shows that it’s an important issue. OECD also shows that inequality in american has been growing faster than other countries around the world. When measuring with the gini coefficient, the U.S’s level of inequality rose by almost five points or 15 percent. Even most americans can agree that wealth and income inequality is slowly getting worse over the years. OECD states “Two recent surveys illustrate the concern about economic inequality in the US. 65% of American adults believe that the gap between the rich and everyone else has

This is important because statistics show that the wealth gap has been growing over the years. According to the movie Inequality For All, there has been a very significant shift shift in income of the average middle class worker and someone in the top 1%. In 1979, the typical male worker made about $48,302 annually , where the typical worker in the top 1% made about $393,682 annually. But when comparing those same numbers to 2010, the average middle class worker’s wage fell to $33,751 whereas the average wage for someone in the top 1% skyrocketed to $1,101,089 (Inequality For All). These statistics show that that the middle class is making less than they were but the top 1% increased their incomes substantially. This further proves that the wealth gap is growing and is indeed an issue of great significance. But even more surprising is the amount of wealth the top 1 percent owns compared to the lower 99 percent of the population. This topic has been brought up in the media many times and is one of the main points in the rhetoric of numerous politicians. According to Jon Slater from the poverty research site Oxfam, “The richest 1% have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014” (Slater). What this piece of evidence shows is that not only is the share of wealth within the top 1 percent substantially high,