Do The Rich Get All The Gains?

Published: May 10, 2019

Has economic progress in America been shared widely or captured by only the rich? The standard story of stagnating wages takes snapshots of one set of people in the past and compares them to an entirely different set of people in the present. But when you follow the same people over time, it becomes clear that the poor and the middle class are prospering, often gaining more than the richest Americans.

For additional studies on these issues plus more information on the studies mentioned, see Russ's essay: “Do the Rich Get All the Gains from Economic Growth?” Available here: https://bit.ly/2VUCUjf.

• Watch Episode 1 in this series, How Is The Middle Class Doing?
• Watch Episode 2 in this series, The Paradox of Household Income.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can we ensure that the same people are being followed over time to prevent distorted data?
2. Why isn’t panel data used more frequently to report income and mobility statistics?

Referenced In The Video

• Read “The American Economy Is Rigged” by Joseph Stiglitz, available here. 
• Read “On Income Stagnation” by Paul Krugman, available here. 
• Read “Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart” by David Leonhardt, available here.
• Read the study “Getting Ahead Or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility In America” by Julia B. Isaacs, Isabel V. Sawhill, and Ron Haskins, available here.
• Read the study “Growth, Inequality and Absolute Mobility in the United States, 1962-2014” by Yonatan Berman. Available here.