Talk:Income inequality in the United States

Nonconstructive? no source?

I put the link source in there, so no clue why it was deleted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Income_inequality_in_the_United_States&oldid=prev&diff=936531901

CBO reported that for the 1979-2007 period, after-tax income (adjusted for inflation) of households in the top 1 percent of earners grew by 275%, compared to 65% for the next 19%, just under 40% for the next 60% and 18% for the bottom fifth.The share of after-tax income received by the top 1% more than doubled from about 8% in 1979 to over 17% in 2007. The share received by the other 19 percent of households in the highest quintile edged up from 35% to 36%. The major cause was an increase in investment income. Capital gains accounted for 80% of the increase in market income for the households in the top 20% (2000–2007). Over the 1991–2000 period capital gains accounted for 45% of market income for the top 20%.

References

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hippypink (talk • contribs) 8 November 2021

Summary of AEA Surveys in lead section

@Avatar317: While I'm sympathetic to the concerns you expressed in your last edit summary, I don't know if paraphrasing the survey statements would be a good idea. An economics professor I took a course with told me that the wording of these kinds of survey statements often have to be very carefully chosen and always usually have to give the respondents the option to agree with provisos (i.e. qualifications). Were we to not include direct quotations, the article may unintentionally mischaracterize the state of academic opinion within the AEA.

While the article may be about income inequality in the United States, there is a Policy responses section with 10 subsections so it is unclear to me why noting that there is consensus on normative propositions about redistribution of income and the income distribution in the United States among professional economists in country would be out of place in the lead section if the positive propositions about the impact of globalization on income inequality in the U.S. and the impact of the distribution of income in the U.S. on the country's economic growth and stability are not.

Per MOS:QUOTE, I think it would be best to include direct quotes of the exact wording of the survey statements in the footnotes in the references list if they are going to be paraphrased. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:49, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you about the quotes and paraphrasing, this is a difficult issue. For one, I think it is confusing to tell the reader that economic consensus is that IE is "bad" (like against God's will?) withOUT also including (I think this happens in the comments sections of the survey you sourced where each economist gets to give their comments) WHY economists say it is bad (reduces equality of OPPORTUNITY, IIRC). Also, wrt income redistribution, this is ONE proposed solution, if they advocate for redistribution it would be more helpful to the reader to characterize whether they also feel that redistribution is a better alternative to the other interventions mentioned in the "Policy responses" section like unions and minimum wages (redistribution being less distortionary to the labor market?).

I feel that the wording and order of consensus statements of that addition was confusing and didn't help the reader understand the subject. First should be consensus on being bad, then (if sourced) why, and then policy responses.

Maybe we could include a new section in the article body where this is detailed to the exact survey wording and paraphrase that section in the lead? Thanks for discussing! ---Avatar317^(talk) 17:42, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it is confusing to tell the reader that economic consensus is that IE is "bad" (like against God's will?) withOUT also including ... WHY economists say it is bad (reduces equality of OPPORTUNITY, IIRC). ... I feel that the wording and order of consensus statements of that addition was confusing and didn't help the reader understand the subject. While I can appreciate if their order or wording was confusing, but I'm not sure I agree that the statements were non-specific about why income inequality is bad. The statements were as follows:

1. "Redistribution of income is a legitimate role for the U.S. Government";
2. "The distribution of income in the U.S. should be more equal";
3. "The distribution of income and wealth has little, if any, impact on economic stability and growth";
4. "The increasing inequality in the distribution of income in the U.S. is due primarily to the benefits and pressures of a global economy."

The first two statements are, as I said before, normative statements (i.e. "prescriptions for what actions individuals or societies should or should not take"), while the second two are positive statements (i.e. "description, quantification and explanation of economic phenomena"). Statement 3 makes clear that there is a consensus among AEA economists about a bad effect of income inequality (i.e. greater economic instability and lower economic growth).

(I think this happens in the comments sections of the survey you sourced where each economist gets to give their comments) For clarification (because this appears to be a source of confusion for many editors about these types of surveys), the academic journal articles that published the survey results do not include comments made by the respondents that indicate why they gave the responses that they did or that explain what their "provisos" for agreeing with the statement were. Respondents are given three response options for each statement in the survey: (1) "agree without provisos"; (2) "agree with provisos"; (3) "disagree". The responses of the survey respondents are anonymized.

Also, wrt income redistribution, this is ONE proposed solution, if they advocate for redistribution it would be more helpful to the reader to characterize whether they also feel that redistribution is a better alternative to the other interventions mentioned in the "Policy responses" section like unions and minimum wages... Redistribution of income (as the Wikipedia article about it notes) is not one policy; it can refer to many policies (e.g. earned income tax credit, negative income tax, universal basic income, transfer payments). As such, the economists are actually referring to a range of policies rather than a specific policy.

First should be consensus on being bad, then (if sourced) why, and then policy responses. Maybe we could include a new section in the article body where this is detailed to the exact survey wording and paraphrase that section in the lead? I don't know if that's necessary. The content was only one paragraph in length, and as there are already sections that discuss Causes, Effects, and Policy responses, including summaries of the AEA surveys would serve to summarize the content in those sections per MOS:INTRO and MOS:LEADREL. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 15:47, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, MOS:INTRO provides that links to other articles may be used where uncommon terminology is necessary. In other words, where the language of the AEA survey statements is unclear, linking to the Redistribution of income and wealth, Income distribution, Economic globalization, Economic growth, and Economic stability articles is what the Wikipedia manual of style would recommend. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:49, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

1) Doesn't it make the most sense when teaching a subject to have the DEscritive statements BEFORE the PREscriptive statements? That's what I mean by order.

2) The lead is already almost too large by policy standards, so we could include a new section in the article body where this is detailed to the exact survey wording and paraphrase that section in the lead.

OR

3) Maybe we could just remove some of your paragraph: "The same surveys from 2000, 2011, and 2021 also showed consistent majorities disagreeing with the statement: "The increasing inequality in the distribution of income in the U.S. is due primarily to the benefits and pressures of a global economy." This essentially tells the reader NOTHING. It says that increasing IE is NOT due to globalization. Ok, so what. Why include this? We know that viruses DON'T cause malaria, should we tell people this in the malaria article?

and 4) Other statements are double negatives: "While a 2000 survey of AEA members found that only 53 percent disagreed with the statement that "The distribution of income and wealth has little, if any, impact on economic stability and growth",[14] surveys from 2011 and 2021 found 73 percent and 78 percent disagreed respectively" - Can't this be paraphrased to say: "In recent surveys, economists state that IE (negatively, I'm assuming) impacts economic stability and growth."?

and finally, how about we end the new edited paragraph with "Surveys of American Economic Association (AEA) members since the 1970s have shown that professional economists generally agree with the statement that "Redistribution of income is a legitimate role for the U.S. Government", and since the 1990s, that "The distribution of income in the U.S. should be more equal."

That would trim and re-order your paragraph to two statements, a descriptive one and a prescriptive one. (Linking like you suggest would be good, Thanks!) ---Avatar317^(talk) 05:19, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

1. Not sure what formal pedagogy research says about this, but in teacher-training courses I took in college, research cited in the course materials suggested that storytelling is among the most effective pedagogical tools. As such, I ordered the statements to conform to the chronology of when the surveys asked the specific statements rather than whether the statements were descriptive or prescriptive.
2. The current word count for the lead section is 457 words. MOS:LEADLENGTH states that the lead sections of featured articles do not usually exceed 400 words, but more broadly says "The appropriate length of the lead section depends on the complexity of the subject and development of the article". Income inequality in the United States is a complex topic, and the article as whole is approaching 10,000 words across 11 sections, so I do not know that the additional paragraph including the AEA surveys really would go beyond what content guidelines recommend. However, if the lead length is that much of a concern, I think this would justify moving the material to the Causes, Effects, and Policy responses sections rather than creating a separate section.
3. I would have to respectfully disagree. The Causes section cites globalization as a cause of rising income inequality. The AEA surveys shows that most professional economists in the US have disagreed with this assertion since 2000.
4. I'm not sure that this is a double negative because the survey statement does not say that income inequality decreases economic growth and stability but that the impact is largely neutral. Besides, modern linguistics has noted that double negatives are a prescriptive grammar rule that is not always sound writing advice. Like I said before, I'm not sure about that paraphrasing these types of survey statements would be better than saying which response option was the most selected by the respondents with respect to the specific survey statement presented verbatim. Additionally, noting the specific level of disagreement in the different surveys shows how professional opinion shifted between 2000 and 2020. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:11, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

   1) Describing things in chronological order is NOT a story. (That would involve people, like characters in a play.)

   3) I thought you talked about being careful about wording, please read your wording more carefully: "The increasing inequality in the distribution of income in the U.S. is due **primarily** to the benefits and pressures of a global economy." There's a huge difference between a PRIMARY cause and just another cause out of the DOZEN listed possibly equally contributing causes discussed in the "Causes" section. Yes, Globalization is a cause, but so are all those others listed.

   4) So if the impact of IE is mostly neutral (as in no effect) why mention it at all in the lead?

   I don't think that we're making any progress in this discussion, so if you want to add those statements as worded in your original edit, each to a separate, already existing section in the article body and not to the lead I'd be ok with that. Otherwise I think we'll need a third opinion. ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:14, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

   Describing things in chronological order is NOT a story. (That would involve people, like characters in a play.) Do AEA members not qualify as people to you? Biographies, organizational histories, and the history of academic disciplines are stories just as much as works of fiction are and regardless whether they are presented as a linear or nonlinear narratives. (Also, remember that I only mentioned storytelling because you're the one who brought up teaching.)

   I thought you talked about being careful about wording, please read your wording more carefully... There's a huge difference between a PRIMARY cause and just another cause out of the DOZEN listed possibly equally contributing causes discussed in the "Causes" section. Yes, Globalization is a cause, but so are all those others listed. The wording of the statement is not mine and is instead how the statement is worded in the surveys. The surveys do not indicate that any of the survey respondents that made up the majorities that disagreed with the statement agree that globalization is a cause at all. My guess is that many possibly don't when considering the survey responses to other statements about international trade in general, but that's not the issue here. What matters is that all that the surveys show is that most survey respondents disagreed with the statement as it is written—which only highlights why paraphrasing it in the Wikipedia article (if it is to be included) is probably not a good idea.

   So if the impact of IE is mostly neutral (as in no effect) why mention it at all in the lead? I did not say that the impact of income inequality is neutral towards economic growth and stability, but rather that the survey statement ("The distribution of income and wealth has little, if any, impact on economic stability and growth") does. The AEA surveys indicate that there is now a consensus among economists against the statement. The purpose of including a summary of the surveys in the lead section was to provide the reader with a summary of where there is consensus among professional economists about various issues related to income inequality.

   The reason why this discussion is not making progress is because your reasoning for the removal has been inconsistent and led the discussion more to the topic itself rather than about the content that was added. Your initial issue is that you found the way that it was worded confusing because you believed that it suggested that income inequality was "bad" without explaining why, that the order of the statements was problematic without explanation, and that the inclusion of the redistribution of income survey statement was problematic. When I noted that some of these concerns were based on misunderstandings, you started arguing that lead section length was too long, that the survey statement about globalization should be removed because you believed it told the reader nothing, that the order of the statements should start with descriptive statements rather than prescriptive statements, and that the wording of the paragraph included double negatives.

   We agree that the content should be retained in the article. I'll just move it to different sections. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:37, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

   Ok, you feel that my criticisms were inconsistent; I feel that the added text was confusing and not helpful to explain the topic, (see WP:ONEDOWN, and this article may be read by an elementary school dropout), but I do COMPLETELY agree with you that the specific wording of these surveys is VERY important to not mis-represent what the surveyed economists agreed on. ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:29, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Unclear wording under “Causes § Globalization”

At the end of the second bullet point paragraph, the following is poorly phrased:

“However, surveys of American Economic Association (AEA) members in 2000, 2011, and 2020 showed that consistent majorities of professional economists in the United States disagreed with the statement: ‘The increasing inequality in the distribution of income in the U.S. is due primarily to the benefits and pressures of a global economy.’”

In particular, the use of the colon before the quotation makes it unclear what position the sampled majority of economists hold. Do they believe that globalization is a contributing factor, or don’t they? 2600:8801:C914:FE00:8487:C428:AC7C:E06A (talk) 19:25, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Minimum wage and inflation adjustment

The chart for the minimum wage uses the unadjusted CPI-U for deflated across time but this is not a good deflator overtime because of methodological adjustments have changed at various points. It should be adjusted using a combination of chained CPI, the retroactive series CPI, CPI-U-X1, and CPI-U as the left leaning Economic Policy Institute does here https://data.epi.org/prices/price_indexes/line/year/national/c_cpi_u_extended_base/overall and here https://data.epi.org/minimum_wage/minimum_wage_levels/line/year/national/real_minimum_wage_2024/overall. CosinusInfection (talk) 04:12, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

World Inequality Database. Many graphs and maps are in the public domain. US too

• World Inequality Database (WID). Many graphs and maps. Use Template:PD-map and Template:PD-chart. Regardless of whatever copyright claims are made by WID.
• https://wid.world/country/usa - Pick variables from menu.

Take screenshot or download via share arrow. Screenshot makes for a larger image. Upload to the Wikimedia Commons. See also:

• Commons:Category:Income distribution by country
• Commons:Category:Income distribution in the United States

--Timeshifter (talk) 23:19, 22 November 2025 (UTC)