State of Working America
In: Economic Policy Institute Ser
In: Economic Policy Institute
The State of Working America -- Table of Contents -- Documentation and methodology. -- Chapter 1: Overview: Policy-driven inequality blocks living-standards growth for low- and middle-income Americans -- America's vast middle class has suffered a 'lost decade' and faces the threat of another -- Income and wage inequality have risen sharply over the last three-and-a-half decades -- 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. -- Economic policies caused increased inequality of wages and incomes -- Claims that growing inequality has not hurt middle-income families are flawed.. -- Growing income inequality has not been offset by increased mobility -- Inequalities persist by race and gender -- Economic history and policy as seen from below the top rungs of the wage and income ladder -- The Great Recession: Causes and consequences -- A very condensed macroeconomic history of the Great Recession and its aftermath -- Economic 'lost decades': Weak growth for most Americans' wages and incomes before and likely after the Great Recession -- Weak labor demand at the heart of the lost decade -- Weak labor demand devastates key living standards -- Dim growth prospects forecast another lost decade -- Two key lessons from the lost decade -- Extraordinarily unequal growth before the lost decade: Rising inequality blocksincome and wage growth from 1979 to 2007 -- Income inequality and stagnating living standards -- Wage inequality and the break between wages and productivity -- Strong income and wage growth in the atypical last half of the 1990s -- Economic mobility has neither caused nor cured the damage done by rising inequality -- Today's private economy: Not performing for middle-income Americans.
