The real value of a $15 minimum wage depends on where you live
Although most Americans back a higher minimum wage, wide disparities in local living costs make finding an appropriate rate difficult.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Although most Americans back a higher minimum wage, wide disparities in local living costs make finding an appropriate rate difficult.
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.
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.
The official poverty rate last year was close to its pre-Great Recession level, but the share of the U.S. poor in severe poverty increased.
Taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns). By contrast, taxpayers with incomes below $30,000 filed nearly 44% of all returns but paid just 1.4% of all federal income tax.
In the U.S., the racial and ethnic wealth gap has evolved differently for families at different income levels since the Great Recession.
The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee.
The middle class has long been the country’s economic majority, but our new analysis finds that’s no longer true.
in terms of income status, the past four decades have been very good to people working in financial and natural-resources industries or as executives and managers, but not so good for sales workers or people in blue-collar manufacturing jobs.
After more than four decades of serving as the nation’s economic majority, the U.S. middle class is now matched in size by those in the economic tiers above and below it.
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