Economic Inequality

Mitt Romney’s statement that he is focused solely on the problems of middle class Americans, not the poor, may not sit well with lower-income voters within his own party. Roughly a quarter of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters have annual family incomes under $30,000, and most of them say that the government does not do […]

Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut writes in the New York Times while Americans are hearing more and more about class conflict, there is little indication that they are increasingly divided along these lines. Their concerns are about policies that give everyone a fair shot.

A majority of Latinos believe that the economic downturn that began in 2007 has been harder on them than on any other ethnic group in America.

The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness.

The November 2011 issuance by the U.S. Census Bureau of a new Supplemental Poverty Measure has rekindled interest in questions that have been raised at various times over the nearly half century since the first official measures were published. This posting explores the perceived flaws of the official poverty measures, as well as the features of the unofficial alternative measure recently unveiled by the Census Bureau and the broader issues raised by the contrast between the two.

The Census Bureau has just published the results from its new alternative measure of poverty, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, and they differ notably from the poverty rates shown by the official measure that’s been used since the 1960s. A new report by the Pew Hispanic Center compares results under both measures for key demographic groups.

The poverty rate for Hispanics was 28.2% in 2010, higher than it was for blacks, non-Hispanic whites or Asians, and higher than the official poverty rate for Hispanics, 26.7%, reported by the Census Bureau.

Households headed by older adults have made dramatic gains relative to those headed by younger adults in their economic well-being over the past quarter of a century.

Without public debate or fanfare, large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives.

Despite an extended economic downturn, the public’s impression of whether the nation is economically divided remains relatively stable.