Despite the pandemic, wage growth held firm for most U.S. workers, with little effect on inequality
Earnings overall have held steady through the pandemic in part because lower-wage workers experienced steeper job losses.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Earnings overall have held steady through the pandemic in part because lower-wage workers experienced steeper job losses.
About one-in-four Black households and one-in-seven Hispanic households had no wealth or were in debt in 2021, compared with about one-in-ten U.S. households overall.
The gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled from 1970 to
2016. Amid rising inequality overall, Asians displaced blacks as the most economically divided major U.S. racial or ethnic group.
Income inequality nearly doubled among Asians in the U.S. from 1970 to 2016. Sizable income gaps persist across racial and ethnic groups, a new study finds.
While the size of the U.S. middle class remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2016, financial gains for middle-income Americans were modest compared with those of higher-income households.
In the U.S., the racial and ethnic wealth gap has evolved differently for families at different income levels since the Great Recession.
The fortunes of the middle classes across Western Europe are moving in different directions. Some nations are experiencing both growing incomes and expanding middle classes, while other nations are witness to stagnant or declining incomes and shrinking middle classes, a new Pew Research Center analysis of 11 Western European countries has found. But in a few other countries studied, the middle-class shares are decreasing even as incomes overall are rising.
From 1991 to 2010, the middle class expands in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but, as in the United States, shrinks in Germany, Italy and Spain
The American middle class is smaller than middle classes across Western Europe, but its income is higher.
The urgency expressed by Pope Francis on global poverty and inequality is grounded in harsh reality. 4.4 billion people – 71% of the global population of 6.2 billion – lived on $10 or less per day in 2011, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the most recently available data.
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