Income Inequality In The United States

Income inequality has been a progressively growing issue in the United States, even today. The problem dates back all the way to the Great Depression, although some researchers tend to think that it is older than that. The difference between the wealth of higher-income families and lower-income families has become a great issue. Many people, including our government, think that they know how they can fix it. They have tried time and time again to come up with solutions, yet we are still facing the same obstacle that we were almost one hundred years ago. The effects that this dilemma is setting forth for our United States’ economy, environment, and even our education is repulsing. There have been many causes of the growth of income inequality …show more content…
This country is now ranked first in poverty worldwide because of this (Esping-Anderson n.p.). The majority of the time, it is not even someone’s fault if they live in poverty. About one half of America’s children generation inherited their inequality (n.p.). These children are born into a poor family and they cannot do anything about it. They grow up and live their lives worrying about how they will eat, how they will wash their clothes, and even how they will get into school. These are some of the many things that the other half of the population take for granted. Also, the top one percent of our working population has more wealth than the other ninety percent combined (Pizzigati 38-43). Once people started to hear about and view this statistic for themselves, they started to lose faith. They no longer believed that the United States had a fair economic playing field, which also leads to workers throwing away the life-taught idea that hard work pays off (Trumbull n.p.). Many studies have even been done to further the idea of how the government could fix this issue. They have come to the conclusion that our economic growth would flourish if our country had a more balanced distribution of wealth …show more content…
Scientists have been able to prove that the more unequal the distribution of income is. The less healthy people are and the shorter the average life expectancy is (38-43). This is because people tend to stress about what other people have that they do not, which leads to major health problems. It is proven to be a lot more stressful to live around people that are wealthier than yourself (Sanger-Katz A. 3). Stress is medically proven to lead to major mental health problems and cardiac diseases. Therefore, people that live in poverty tend to have more medical issues throughout their