The past 15 years have been particularly hard on wealth and income because of the recession of 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-2009. For all groups, incomes rose from 1970 to 2000. In the next decade, incomes for all groups declined. During the past four years, incomes rose 3 percent for the wealthiest, 1 percent for middle-income Americans, and not at all for those with the lowest incomes. For those in the middle, the median income in 2014 was 4 percent lower than in 2000, according to the study.
For most families, the two recessions have wiped out previous gains and widened the wealth and income gap between the wealthiest and all others. “The losses were so large that only upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth over the span of 30 years from 1983 to 2013,” according to the Pew study. full: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/charting-trumps-rise-in-the-decline-of-the-middle-class/2015/12/12/0f5df1d8-a037-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
