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| Documentation and methodology | |
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| Overview: Policy-driven inequality blocks living-standards growth for low- and middle-income Americans | |
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| America's vast middle class has suffered a 'lost decade' and faces the threat of another | |
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| Income and wage inequality have risen sharply over the last three-and-a-half decades | |
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| Rising inequality is the major cause of wage stagnation for workers and of the failure of low-and middle-income families to appropriately benefit from growth | |
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| Economic policies caused increased inequality of wages and incomes | |
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| Claims that growing inequality has not hurt middle-income families are flawed | |
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| Growing income inequality has not been offset by increased mobility | |
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| Inequalities persist by race and gender | |
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| Economic history and policy as seen from below the top rungs of the wage and income ladder | |
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| The Great Recession: Causes and consequences | |
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| A very condensed macroeconomic history of the Great Recession and its aftermath | |
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| Economic 'lost decades': Weak growth for most American's wages and incomes before and likely after the Great Recession | |
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| Weak labor demand at the heart of the lost decade | |
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| Weak labor demand devastates key living standards | |
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| Dim growth prospects forecast another lost decade | |
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| Two key lessons from the lost decade | |
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| Extraordinarily unequal growth before the lost decade: Rising inequality blocks income and wage growth from 1979 to 2007 | |
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| Income inequality and stagnating living standards | |
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| Wage inequality and the break between wages and productivity | |
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| Strong income and wage growth in the atypical last half of the 1990s | |
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| Economic mobility has neither caused nor cured the damage done by rising inequality | |
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| Today's private economy: Not performing for middle-income Americans | |
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| Middle-income growth lags average income growth and historical income growth rates | |
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| Social insurance programs, not private sources, account for the majority of middle-fifth income growth | |
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| Growing shares of income are dedicated to holding families harmless against rising medical costs | |
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| Households have to work more to achieve income gains | |
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| Assessing what the private economy is really delivering to middle-income Americans | |
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| Today's economy: Different outcomes by race and gender | |
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| Many more than just two Americas | |
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| Male and female America | |
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| No one 'American economy' | |
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| Conclusion: The struggling state of working America is policy-driven | |
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| The policy good for everybody in the fractured U.S. economy: Ensuring rapid recovery to full employment | |
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| Table and figure notes | |
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| Income: Already a 'lost decade' | |
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| The basic contours of American incomes | |
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| Family and household money income | |
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| Median family income as a metric of economic performance | |
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| A look at income by income fifths | |
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| Median family income by race, ethnicity, and nativity | |
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| The Great Recession and American incomes | |
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| Impact by income group | |
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| Impact by race and ethnicity | |
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| Income losses projected for years to come | |
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| Rising inequality of American incomes | |
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| Family income inequality | |
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| Unequal growth of comprehensive household incomes suggests diverging well-being | |
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| Sharp rise in income inequality apparent in every major data source | |
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| The limited impact of taxes and transfers relative to market income | |
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| Factors behind the large rise in inequality of market incomes | |
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| How much did middle-income living standards actually rise between 1979 and 2007? | |
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| Measuring living standards at the middle | |
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| Sources of income for the middle fifth | |
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| Income growth for the middle fifth has been driven largely by elderly households' pension and transfer income | |
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| Adjusting income for the truer contribution of health care transfers | |
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| Disproportionate growth of transfers directed toward elderly households | |
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| The role of hours worked and educational upgrading in wage growth | |
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| Little of the growth of middle incomes can be attributed to a well-functioning economy | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Table and figure notes | |
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| Mobility: not offsetting growing inequality | |
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| Intragenerational mobility | |
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| Lifetime mobility against the backdrop of generational stagnation | |
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| Family and individual mobility trends | |
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| Factors associated with intragenerational mobility | |
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| Intergenerational mobility | |
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| Cross-country comparisons | |
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| The impact of race, wealth, and education on mobility | |
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| Race | |
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| Wealth | |
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| Education | |
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| Income inequality and mobility | |
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| Has the American Dream become more or less attainable over time? | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Figure notes | |
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| Wages: The top, and very top, outpace the rest | |
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| Describing wage trends | |
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| The decade of lost wage growth | |
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| Contrasting work hours and hourly wage growth | |
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| Contrasting compensation and wage growth | |
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| Wages of production and nonsupervisory workers | |
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| Wage trends by wage level | |
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| Shifts in low-wage jobs | |
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| Trends among very high earners fuel growing wage inequality | |
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| Trends in benefit growth and inequality | |
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| Dimensions of wage inequality | |
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| Gaps between higher- and lower-wage workers | |
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| Gaps between workers with different education and experience levels | |
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| The gap between workers with comparable education and experience | |
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| Rising education/wage differentials | |
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| Young workers' wages | |
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| The growth of within-group wage inequality | |
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| Wage inequality by race/ethnicity and gender | |
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| Productivity and the compensation/productivity gap | |
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| Factors driving wage inequality | |
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| Unemployment | |
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| The shift to low-paying industries | |
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| Employer health care costs | |
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| Trade and wages | |
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| Immigration | |
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| Unionization | |
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| The decline in the real value of the minimum wage | |
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| Executive and finance-sector pay | |
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| Explaining wage inequality: Bringing the factors together | |
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| Technology and skill mismatches | |
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| What is the appeal of the technology story? | |
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| Education gaps and wage inequality | |
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| The slowdown in the growth of demand for college graduates | |
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| Within-group wage inequality | |
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| The labor market difficulties of college graduates | |
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| Jobs of the future | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Table and figure notes | |
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| Jobs: A function of demand | |
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| Job creation is a macroeconomic outcome | |
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| Zero is not the baseline for job growth | |
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| What are today's jobs like? | |
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| Industries | |
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| Firm size | |
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| Occupations | |
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| Job quality | |
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| Unemployment | |
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| Unemployment and age | |
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| Unemployment and race/ethnicity, gender, and education | |
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| Unemployment rates of foreign- and native-born workers | |
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| Unemployment insurance benefits | |
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| Labor force participation: Structural and cyclical changes | |
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| Beyond the unemployment rate: Other measures of labor market slack | |
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| Employment-to-population ratio | |
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| Underemployment | |
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| Long-term unemployment | |
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| Over-the-year unemployment | |
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| Job-seekers ratio | |
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| Voluntary quits | |
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| Recovering from the Great Recession | |
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| Comparing the Great Recession and its aftermath with earlier recessions and recoveries | |
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| Job loss and gender in the Great Recession | |
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| Unemployment in the aftermath of the Great Recession: Structural or cyclical? | |
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| The consequences of job loss and unemployment for workers and their families | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Table and figure notes | |
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| Wealth: Unrelenting disparities | |
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| Net worth | |
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| The racial divide in net worth | |
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| Assets | |
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| Stocks | |
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| Housing | |
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| Retirement insecurity | |
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| Liabilities | |
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| Student loan debt | |
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| Debt relative to disposable personal income | |
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| Debt service | |
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| Hardship | |
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| Bankruptcy | |
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| Wealth of U.S. citizens compared with citizens' wealth in peer countries | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Table and figure notes | |
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| Poverty: The Great Recession adds injury to insult | |
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| Poverty measurement | |
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| Official poverty line | |
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| Supplemental Poverty Measure | |
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| Relative poverty | |
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| The working poor | |
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| Poverty-level wages | |
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| Job quality | |
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| Work hours | |
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| Determinants of low incomes | |
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| The macro economy and poverty | |
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| The impact of economic, demographic, and education changes on poverty rates | |
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| Resources for low-income Americans | |
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| International comparisons | |
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| Poverty and the earnings distribution | |
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| Resource allocation | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Table and figure notes | |
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| CPS income measurement | |
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| Wage measurement | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |
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| About EPI | |
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| About the authors | |