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Income Inequality Literature Review

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Income Gap Inequality: A Dividing Problem - Literature Review
Introduction
Income inequality is a pressing issue for many economists, researchers, and politicians. The gap between the top 1% and the other 99% of Americans has increased for the past three decades (DeSilver; Cobb; Milanovic; Hatch, Ribgy; Jacobs, Dirlam; Cooper, Palumbo, Lutz). Income inequality is defined as the uneven distribution of income in the population, and the gap between the wealthy and everyone else (Priester, Mendelson).
In 2013, the top 1 percent of the population took home more than 20% of income earned (Saez, Piketty). Bill Gates and Warren Buffet alone account for the income of the bottom 40% of the United States (Freeland). The gap between the top 1% and the …show more content…
Economists believe that the factor they research has the greatest degree of impact on income inequality which is why there are many solutions to the problem of income inequality. The U.S. government may not change all the factors and the United States will never have perfect equality, but they must have action to narrow the gap between the top 1% and the rest of …show more content…
Their findings presented that state level policy plays a large part in income inequality and states have varying levels of income inequality because of the different tax policies of each state. Government policy through a stronger neoliberal administration (Jacobs, Dirlam) or through state level tax policy which has a larger impact on income inequality than any other level (Cooper, Lutz, Palumbo; Hatch, Rigby) can have a large impact on narrowing or widening the income inequality gap depending on how its

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