Perspectives on Inequality and Opportunity from the Survey of Consumer Finances

By Janet L. Yellen. RSF, 2014

113 citations recorded by the source corpus.

During the past several decades, the United States has experienced its most sustained rise in inequality since the nineteenth century. The U.S. distribution of income and wealth is now wider than in most other advanced countries. To provide a factual basis for further discussion, this paper reviews trends in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades, and then discusses four significant sources of economic opportunity in the United States: the resources available for children in their most formative years, affordable higher education, private business ownership, and inheritances.

Subfields: Accounting, Finance, Sociology and Political Science

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