Income Inequality in America: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues)

About this book

This book provides a one-stop resource for understanding the full dimensions of income inequality in the USA including chief socioeconomic drivers of inequality and proposals to reduce the widening gap between rich and poor in America. Carefully researched and scrupulously nonpartisan this resource examines the history and current state of income inequality in the USA with a particular focus on key issues events and political/economic philosophies relevant to the enduring divide between rich and poor in America. One of the most valuable aspects of the book is that it surveys the complex history of income inequality in an easy-to-understand fashion that helps readers identify and assess the ways in which income inequality shapes many aspects of modern American society. The book is even-handed in its treatment of the academic and policy debates over the causes consequences and appropriate response to todays growing inequality. In addition this resource provides insights into the financial underpinnings of debt and wealth and capitalism and how all of those factors perpetuate themselves. It also examines problems and challenges related to child care education transportation housing and saving for retirement that hamper so many poor people in their efforts to lift their households out of poverty.