79-526: The Negro Family: The Case For National Action , commonly known as the Moynihan Report , was a 1965 report on black poverty in the United States written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan , an American scholar serving as Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Lyndon B. Johnson and later to become a US Senator. Moynihan argued that the rise in black single-mother families was caused not by
158-572: A 2001 interview with PBS , Moynihan said: My view is we had stumbled onto a major social change in the circumstances of post-modern society. It was not long ago in this past century that an anthropologist working in London – a very famous man at the time, Malinowski – postulated what he called the first rule of anthropology: That in all known societies, all male children have an acknowledged male parent. That's what we found out everywhere… And well, maybe it's not true anymore. Human societies change. By
237-645: A PhD in 1978. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1990–1991. Douglas S. Massey is the founder and co-director of the Latin American Migration Project, and the Mexican Migration Project with his long-time collaborator Jorge G. Durand . He is Board Member of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence ( Institut für interdisziplinäre Konflikt und Gewaltforschung ) at Bielefeld University ,
316-738: A critique of the Moynihan report. He said that it was an attempt to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor. Some scholars argue the Moynihan Report presents a "male-centric" view of social problems, arguing that Moynihan and similar scholarship failed to take into account basic rational incentives for marriage and that he did not acknowledge that women had historically engaged in marriage in part out of need for material resources, as adequate wages were otherwise denied by cultural traditions excluding women from most jobs outside
395-545: A decade ago when nearly two-thirds of families owned stock." The table below shows changes from Q4 2016 (the end of the Obama Administration) to Q1 2022. There is an important distinction between income and wealth . Income refers to a flow of money over time, commonly in the form of a wage or salary; wealth is a collection of assets owned, minus liabilities. In essence, income is what people receive through work, retirement, or social welfare whereas wealth
474-543: A lack of jobs, but by a destructive vein in ghetto culture , which could be traced to slavery times and continued discrimination in the American South under Jim Crow . Black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier had introduced that idea in the 1930s, but Moynihan was considered one of the first academicians to defy conventional social-science wisdom about the structure of poverty. As he wrote later, "The work began in
553-582: A lifetime. Income statistics cover too narrow a time span for it to be an adequate indicator of financial inequality. For example, the Gini coefficient for wealth inequality increased from 0.80 in 1983 to 0.84 in 1989. In the same year, 1989, the Gini coefficient for income was only 0.52. The Gini coefficient is an economic tool on a scale from 0 to 1 that measures the level of inequality. 1 signifies perfect inequality and 0 represents perfect equality. From this data, it
632-400: A majority of households in the top income quintile have moved to a lower quintile within one decade. There are even more changes to households in the top 1%. Without including those data here, a reader is likely to assume households in the top 1% are almost the same from year to year. ) In 2009, people in the top 1% of taxpayers made $ 343,927 or more. According to US economist Joseph Stiglitz
711-773: A past editor of the International Journal of Conflict and Violence and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Sociology . Massey was president of the Population Association of America in 1996. He served as the 92nd president of the American Sociological Association , 2000–2001, From 2006 to 2015, he was the president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science . In 2008, he received
790-449: A regular basis (exclusive of certain money receipts such as capital gains) before payments on personal income taxes, social security, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. By this official measure, the wealthiest families may have low income, but the value of their assets may be enough money to support their lifestyle. Dividends from trusts or gains in the stock market do not fall under the aforementioned definition of income, but are commonly
869-533: A sizable fraction of household wealth" and "including pensions and Social Security in net worth makes the distribution more even." In Inequality for All —a 2013 documentary, narrated by Robert Reich , in which he argues that income inequality is the defining issue of the United States—Reich states that 95% of economic gains following the economic recovery which began in 2009 went to the top 1% of Americans (by net worth) ( HNWI ). A September 2017 study by
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#1732780581232948-536: A substantial head start. In September 2012, according to the Institute for Policy Studies , over 60 percent of the Forbes richest 400 Americans grew up in substantial privilege. In 2013, wealth inequality in the U.S. was greater than in most developed countries, other than Switzerland and Denmark . In the United States, the use of offshore holdings is exceptionally small compared to Europe, where much of
1027-417: A variety of freedoms, and removes limits on life that one might otherwise face. Federal Reserve data indicates that as of Q4 2021, the top 1% of households in the United States held 30.9% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%. From 1989 to 2019, wealth became increasingly concentrated in the top 1% and top 10% due in large part to corporate stock ownership concentration in those segments of
1106-534: A way that would come to be called "Moynihan's scissors." When Moynihan published his report in 1965, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks was 25 percent, much higher than that of whites. In the introduction to his report, Moynihan said that "the gap between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening." He also said that the collapse of the nuclear family in the black lower class would preserve
1185-462: A week, were more likely to be self-employed, and earned a fifth of their income as capital income. The top one percent was composed of many professions and had an annual turnover rate of more than 25%. The five most common professions were managers , physicians , administrators , lawyers , and teachers . A 2022 study in PNAS found that earnings inequality in the United States did not increase over
1264-731: Is also low. According to the Congressional Budget Office , between 1979 and 2007, incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. (Note: The IRS insists that comparisons of adjusted gross income pre-1987 and post-1987 are complicated by large changes in the definition of AGI, which led to households within the top income quintile reporting more of their income on their individual income tax form's AGI, rather than reporting their business income in separate corporate tax returns, or not reporting certain non-taxable income in their AGI at all, such as municipal bond income. In addition, IRS studies consistently show that
1343-548: Is an American sociologist . Massey is currently a professor of Sociology at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and is an adjunct professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania . Massey specializes in the sociology of immigration, and has written on the effect of residential segregation on the black underclass in the United States. He has been president of
1422-689: Is called the Great Compression . Franklin D. Roosevelt's establishment of social programs under the New Deal and efforts towards wealth redistribution also reduced wealth inequality. The Federal Reserve publishes information on the distribution of household assets, debt, and equity (net worth) by quarter going back to 1989. The tables below summarize the net worth data, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), for 1989 to 2022, and 2016 to 2022. Journalist Matthew Yglesias explained in June 2019 how
1501-423: Is evident that in 1989 there was a discrepancy in the level of economic disparity; the extent of wealth inequality was significantly higher than income inequality. Recent research shows that many households, in particular, those headed by young parents (younger than 35), minorities, and individuals with low educational attainment, display very little accumulation. Many have no financial assets and their total net worth
1580-615: Is justified by their income. Wages are also determined by the "market price of a skill" at that current time. Although gender inequality is a separate social issue, it plays a role in economic inequality. According to the U.S. Census Report, in America the median full-time salary for women is 77 percent of that for men. Also contributing to the wealth inequality in the U.S, both unskilled and skilled workers are being replaced by machinery. The Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics argues that because of this "technological advance",
1659-539: Is usually not used for daily expenditures or factored into household budgets, but combined with income, it represents a family's total opportunity to secure stature and a meaningful standard of living , or to pass their class status down to their children. Moreover, wealth provides for both short- and long-term financial security, bestows social prestige, contributes to political power , and can be leveraged to obtain more wealth. Hence, wealth provides mobility and agency—the ability to act. The accumulation of wealth enables
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#17327805812321738-471: Is what people own. While the two are related, income inequality alone is insufficient for understanding economic inequality for two reasons: In 1998, Dennis Gilbert asserted that the standard of living of the working and middle classes is dependent primarily upon income and wages, while the rich tend to rely on wealth, distinguishing them from the vast majority of Americans. The United States Census Bureau formally defines income as money received on
1817-582: The American Economic Journal found that greater economic inequality in the United States than in Europe was not because of the nature of tax and transfer systems in the United States. The study found that the U.S. redistributes a greater share of its wealth to the bottom half of the income distribution than any European country. The study found instead that Europe had less economic inequality because it had been more successful at ensuring that
1896-477: The COVID-19 pandemic , the wealth held by billionaires in the U.S. increased by 70%, with 2020 marking the steepest increase in billionaires' share of wealth on record. In 2007, the top 20% of the wealthiest Americans possessed 80% of all financial assets. In 2007, the richest 1% of the American population owned 35% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 51%. The top 20% of Americans owned 86% of
1975-544: The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that when state and federal taxes are taken into account, however, the poorest 20 percent pay an effective 20.2 percent rate while the top 1 percent pay an effective 33.7 percent rate. Using Federal Reserve data, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth reported in August 2019 that: "Looking at the cumulative growth of wealth disaggregated by group, we see that
2054-464: The People's Policy Project , 79% of the country's wealth is owned by millionaires and billionaires. Also in 2019, PolitiFact reported that three people (less than the 400 reported in 2011) had more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans. During the COVID-19 pandemic , the wealth held by billionaires in the U.S. increased by 70%. According to the 2022 World Inequality Report , "2020 marked
2133-542: The Population Association of America , the American Sociological Association and the American Academy of Political and Social Science . He is a co-editor of the Annual Review of Sociology . Massey received his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, Psychology, and Spanish, from Western Washington University in 1974. In 1977 he received a Master of Arts in Sociology from Princeton University , and
2212-415: The 72nd percentile of white families. If you're black, it's good enough to catapult you into the 95th percentile." This means 28 percent of the total 83 million white homes, or over 23 million white households, have more than $ 356,000 in net assets. While only 700,000 of the 14 million black homes have more than $ 356,000 in total net worth. Douglas Massey Douglas Steven Massey (born October 5, 1952)
2291-549: The Federal Reserve reported that the top 1% owned 38.5% of the country's wealth in 2016. According to a June 2017 report by the Boston Consulting Group , around 70% of the nation's wealth will be in the hands of millionaires and billionaires by 2021. A 2019 study by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the average effective tax rate paid by the richest 400 families (0.003%) in
2370-547: The U.S. since WWII has seen a corresponding rise in the inequality of wealth and income. Some tax policies subsidize wealthy people more than poor people; critics often argue the home mortgage interest deduction should be abolished because it provides more tax relief for people in higher tax brackets and with more expensive homes, and that poorer people are more often renters and therefore less likely to be able to use this deduction at all. Regressive taxes include payroll taxes , sales taxes , and fuel taxes . A 2022 study in
2449-540: The U.S., which is highly concentrated among the wealthiest families: The Federal Reserve reported the median value of stock ownership by income group for 2016: NPR reported that when politicians reference the stock market as a measure of economic success, that success is not relevant to nearly half of Americans. Further, more than one-third of Americans who work full-time have no access to pensions or retirement accounts such as 401(k)s that derive their value from financial assets like stocks and bonds. The NYT reported that
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2528-469: The US was 23 percent, more than a percentage point lower than the 24.2 percent paid by the bottom half of American households. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center found that the bottom 20 percent of earners pay an average 2.9 percent effective income tax rate federally, while the richest 1 percent paid an effective 29.6 percent tax rate and the top 0.01 percent paid an effective 30.6 percent tax rate. In 2019,
2607-491: The United States#Racial disparities The inequality of wealth (i.e. inequality in the distribution of assets ) has substantially increased in the United States in recent decades. Wealth commonly includes the values of any homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings , and investments , as well as any associated debts. Although different from income inequality , the two are related. Wealth
2686-448: The already-wealthy, as they were the only ones financially sound enough to invest. Simon Kuznets , using income tax records and his research-based estimates, showed a reduction of about 10% in the movement of national income toward the top 10% of wealth-owners, a reduction from about 45–50% in 1913 to about 30–35% in 1948. This period spans both The Great Depression and World War II , events with significant economic consequences. This
2765-405: The black community (a trend that had already begun by the mid-1960s), leading to vast increases in the numbers of households headed by females. Moynihan made a contemporaneous argument for programs for jobs, vocational training, and educational programs for the black community. Modern scholars of the 21st century, including Douglas Massey , believe that the report was one of the more influential in
2844-441: The bottom 50 percent of wealth owners experienced no net wealth growth since 1989. At the other end of the spectrum, the top 1 percent have seen their wealth grow by almost 300 percent since 1989. Although cumulative wealth growth was relatively similar among all wealth groups through the 1990s, the top 1 percent and bottom 50 percent diverged around 2000." According to an analysis of Survey of Consumer Finances data from 2019 by
2923-406: The bottom half of the income distribution are able to get relatively well-paying jobs. The wealth gap between white and black families nearly tripled from $ 85,000 in 1984 to $ 236,500 in 2009. A Brandeis University Institute on Assets and Social Policy paper cites the number of years of homeownership, household income, unemployment, education, and inheritance as leading causes for the growth of
3002-532: The breakdown of the black family threatened the achievement of racial equality. They rightly blast those liberals who denounced Moynihan's report." Sociologist Stephen Steinberg argued in 2011 that the Moynihan report was condemned "because it threatened to derail the Black liberation movement." Psychologist William Ryan coined the phrase " blaming the victim " in his 1971 book Blaming the Victim , specifically as
3081-541: The construction of the War on Poverty . In 2009 historian Sam Tanenhaus wrote that Moynihan's fights with the New Left over the report were a signal that Great Society liberalism had political challengers both from the right and from the left. From the time of its publication, the report has been sharply attacked by black and civil rights leaders as examples of white patronizing, cultural bias, or racism. At various times,
3160-552: The continuation of wealth inequality in America: the rich are accumulating more assets while the middle and working classes are just getting by. As of 2007, the richest 1% held about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States. While the bottom 90% held 73.2% of all debt. According to The New York Times , the richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. However, other studies argue that higher average savings rate will contribute to
3239-486: The country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 14%. In 2011, financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 43%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%. However, after the Great Recession , which began in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 35% to 37%, and that owned by
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3318-401: The gap between possibilities for Negroes and other groups and favor other ethnic groups. He acknowledged the continued existence of racism and discrimination within society, despite the victories that blacks had won by civil rights legislation. Moynihan concluded, "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over
3397-467: The gap, concluding homeownership to be the most important. Inheritance can directly link the disadvantaged economic position and prospects of today's blacks to the disadvantaged positions of their parents' and grandparents' generations, according to a report done by Robert B. Avery and Michael S. Rendall that pointed out "one in three white households will receive a substantial inheritance during their lifetime compared to only one in ten black households." In
3476-435: The hands of the wealthiest Americans. The mechanism for this is that when the wealthy avoid paying taxes, wealth concentrates to their coffers and the poor go into debt. The economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that "Strong unions have helped to reduce inequality, whereas weaker unions have made it easier for CEOs, sometimes working with market forces that they have helped shape, to increase it." The long fall in unionization in
3555-448: The heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.' Also, the report argued that the matriarchal structure of black culture weakened the ability of black men to function as authority figures. That particular notion of black familial life has become a widespread, if not dominant, paradigm for comprehending
3634-482: The home. With the expansion of welfare in the US in the mid to late 20th century , women gained better access to government resources intended to reduce family and child poverty . Women also increasingly gained access to the workplace. As a result, more women were able to subsist independently when men had difficulty finding work. Declaring Moynihan "prophetic," Ken Auletta , in his 1982 The Underclass , proclaimed that "one cannot talk about poverty in America, or about
3713-509: The income gap between workers and owners has widened. Income inequality contributes to wealth inequality. For example, economist Emmanuel Saez wrote in June 2016 that the top 1% of families captured 52% of the total real income (GDP) growth per family from 2009 to 2015. From 2009 to 2012, the top 1% captured 91% of the income gains. Nepotism perpetuates and increases wealth inequality. Wealthy families pass down their assets allowing future generations to develop even more wealth. The poor, on
3792-421: The journal Sociological Perspectives , Lisa Keister reports that family size and structure during childhood "are related to racial differences in adult wealth accumulation trajectories, allowing whites to begin accumulating high-yield assets earlier in life." The article "America's Financial Divide" added context to racial wealth inequality, stating: ... nearly 96.1 percent of the 1.2 million households in
3871-626: The late 18th century. The Gini coefficient , which measures inequality on a scale from 0 to 1(with 1 being very high inequality) was 0.367 in New England and the Middle Atlantic, as compared to 0.57 in Europe. Some reasons for this include the ease that the average American had in buying frontier land, which was abundant at the time, and an overall scarcity of labor in non-slaveholding areas, which forced landowners to pay higher wages. There were also relatively few poor people in America at
3950-497: The most orthodox setting, the US Department of Labor , to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what 'everyone knew': that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so." The report concluded that the high rate of families headed by single mothers would greatly hinder progress of blacks toward economic and political equality. The Moynihan Report
4029-601: The other hand, are less able to leave inheritances to their children leaving the latter with little or no wealth on which to build. Wealthy parents often use their economic or political power to advantage their own children, such as by providing extra funding for education, excluding poor families from the local community or schools (usually through exclusionary zoning ), using social connections to provide opportunities for advancement like internships , and allowing children to take entrepreneurial risks without risking homelessness or destitution. Corresponding to financial resources,
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#17327805812324108-480: The over 14 million African American households have more than $ 1.2 million in net assets ... Relying on data from Credit Suisse and Brandeis University 's Institute on Assets and Social Policy, the Harvard Business Review in the article "How America's Wealthiest Black Families Invest Money" stated: If you're white and have a net worth of about $ 356,000, that's good enough to put you in
4187-481: The ownership of stock has driven wealth inequality, as the bottom 50% has minimal stock ownership: "...[T]he bottom half of the income distribution had a huge share of its wealth tied up in real estate while owning essentially no shares of corporate stock. The top 1 percent, by contrast, wasn't just rich — it was specifically rich in terms of owning companies, both stock in publicly traded ones ("corporate equities") and shares of closely held ones ("private businesses")...So
4266-461: The past generation in the United States." More than 30 years later, S. Craig Watkins described Moynihan's conclusions: Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (1998): The report concluded that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a 'tangle of pathology... capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world,' and that 'at
4345-481: The percentage of workers covered by generous defined-benefit pension plans has declined from 62% in 1983 to 17% by 2016. While some economists consider an increase in the stock market to have a "wealth effect" that increases economic growth, economists like Former Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher believe those effects are limited. Essentially, the wealthy possess greater financial opportunities that allow their money to make more money . Earnings from
4424-443: The poor from having any opportunity to accumulate wealth and thereby better their conditions. Economic inequality is also a result of difference in income. Factors that contribute to this gap in wages are things such as level of education, labor market demand and supply, gender differences, growth in technology, and personal abilities. The quality and level of education that a person has often corresponds to their skill level, which
4503-399: The population; the bottom 50% own little if any corporate stock. From an international perspective, the difference in the US median and mean wealth per adult is over 600%. A 2011 study found that US citizens across the political spectrum dramatically underestimate the current level of wealth inequality in the US, and would prefer a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth. During
4582-456: The preceding decade, marking the first reversal of rising earnings inequality since 1980. The reversal was due to a shrinking wage gap between low-wage workers and median-wage earners, which was due to broadly rising pay in low-wage professions. At the same time, the gap between median-wage workers and top earners widened. In March 2017, NPR summarized the distribution of U.S. stock market ownership (direct and indirect through mutual funds ) in
4661-415: The primary source of capital for the ultra-wealthy. Retired people also have little income, but may have a high net worth, because of money saved over time. Additionally, income does not capture the extent of wealth inequality. Wealth is most commonly obtained over time, through the steady investing of income, and the growth of assets. The income of one year does not typically encompass the accumulation over
4740-594: The reduction of the share of wealth owned by the rich. The reason is that the rich in wealth are not necessarily the individuals with the highest income. Therefore, the relative wealth share of poorer quintiles of the population would increase if the savings rate of income is very large, although the absolute difference from the wealthiest will increase. The nature of tax policies in America has been suggested by economists and politicians such as Emmanuel Saez , Thomas Piketty , and Barack Obama to perpetuate economic inequality in America by steering large sums of wealth into
4819-581: The report "may have been the last honest government report on race." In 2015 Sowell argued that time had proved correct Moynihan's core idea that African-American poverty was less a result of racism and more a result of single-parent families: "One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994." Political commentator Heather Mac Donald wrote for National Review in 2008, "Conservatives of all stripes routinely praise Daniel Patrick Moynihan's prescience for warning in 1965 that
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#17327805812324898-481: The report for its findings. He has also said, "The solutions to the major problems that confront many black people won't be found in the political arena, especially not in Washington or state capitols." Thomas Sowell , an African-American libertarian economist as well, has also praised the Moynihan Report on several occasions. His 1982 book Race and Economics mentions Moynihan's report, and in 1998 he asserted that
4977-554: The report has been condemned or dismissed by the NAACP and other civil rights groups and leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton . Critics accused Moynihan of relying on stereotypes of the black family and black men, implying that blacks had inferior academic performance, portrayed crime and pathology as endemic to the black community and failing to recognize that cultural bias and racism in standardized tests had contributed to apparent lower achievement by blacks in school. The report
5056-409: The richest 1% of Americans gained 93% of the additional income created in 2010. A study by Emmanuel Saez and Piketty showed that the top 10 percent of earners earned more than half of the country's total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago. People in the top one percent were three times more likely to work more than 50 hours
5135-476: The role of the patriarch. Ferguson argued that the Moynihan Report generated hegemonic discourses about minority communities and nationalist sentiments in the Black community. Ferguson uses the discourse of the Moynihan Report to inform his Queer of Color Critique , which attempts to resist national discourse while acknowledging a simultaneity of oppression through coalition building. African-American libertarian economist and writer Walter E. Williams has praised
5214-502: The social and economic disintegration of late 20th-century black urban life. The Moynihan Report generated considerable controversy and has had long-lasting and important influence. Writing to Lyndon Johnson , Moynihan argued that without access to jobs and the means to contribute meaningful support to a family, black men would become systematically alienated from their roles as husbands and fathers, which would cause rates of divorce, child abandonment and out-of-wedlock births to skyrocket in
5293-558: The steepest increase in global billionaires' share of wealth on record." As of late 2022, according to Snopes , 735 billionaires collectively possessed more wealth than the bottom half of U.S. households ($ 4.5 trillion and $ 4.1 trillion respectively). The top 1% held a total of $ 43.45 trillion. In the late 18th century, “incomes were more equally distributed in colonial America than in any other place that can be measured,” according to Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson. The richest 1 percent of households held only 8.5% of total income in
5372-615: The stock market or mutual funds are reinvested to produce a larger return. Over time, the sum that is invested becomes progressively more substantial. Those who are not wealthy, however, do not have the resources to enhance their opportunities and improve their economic position. Rather, "after debt payments, poor families are constrained to spend the remaining income on items that will not produce wealth and will depreciate over time." Scholar David B. Grusky notes that "62 percent of households headed by single parents are without savings or other financial assets." Net indebtedness generally prevents
5451-501: The terminology used to define white families cannot be used to define African-American families because of the way slavery has affected the African-American family. Scholar Roderick Ferguson traced the effects of the Moynihan Report in his book Aberrations in Black, noting that black nationalists disagreed with the report's suggestion that the state provide black men with masculinity, but agreed that men needed to take back
5530-756: The time of that interview, rates of the number of children born to single mothers had gone up in the white and Hispanic working classes as well. In November 2016, the Current Population Survey of the United States Census Bureau reported that 69 percent of children under the age of 18 lived with two parents, which was a decline from 88 percent in 1960, while the percentage of U.S. children under 18 living with one parent increased from 9 percent (8 percent with mothers, 1 percent with fathers) to 27 percent (23 percent with mothers, 4 percent with fathers). Wealth inequality in
5609-549: The time, since only those with at least some money could afford to come to America. Inequality grew in the 19th century; between 1774 and 1860, the Gini coefficient grew from 0.441 to 0.529. In 1860, the top 1 percent collected almost one-third of property incomes , as compared to 13.7% in 1774. There was a great deal of competition for land in the cities and non-frontier areas during this time period, with those who had already acquired land becoming richer than everyone else. The newly burgeoning financial sector also greatly rewarded
5688-456: The top 20% of Americans grew from 86% to 88%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36% in median household wealth, but a drop of only 11% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99%. According to PolitiFact and other sources, in 2011, the 400 wealthiest Americans had more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Inherited wealth may help explain why many Americans who have become rich may have had
5767-439: The top one percent by income were white, a total of about 1,150,000 households. In addition, these families were found to have a median net asset worth of $ 8.3 million. In stark contrast, in the same piece, black households were shown as a mere 1.4 percent of the top one percent by income, that's only 16,800 homes. In addition, their median net asset worth was just $ 1.2 million. Using this data as an indicator only several thousand of
5846-537: The underclass, without talking about the weakening family structure of the poor." Both the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times ran a series on the black family in 1983, followed by a 1985 Newsweek article called "Moynihan: I Told You So." In 1986, CBS aired the documentary The Vanishing Family , hosted by Bill Moyers , a onetime aide to President Johnson, which affirmed Moynihan's findings. In
5925-504: The value of those specific assets — assets that people in the bottom half of the distribution never had a chance to own in the first place — soared." The National Public Radio , also known as NPR, reported in 2017 that the bottom 50% of U.S. households (by net worth) have little stock market exposure (neither directly nor indirectly through 401k plans), writing: "That means the stock market rally can only directly benefit around half of all Americans — and substantially fewer than it would have
6004-493: The wealth of the top percentiles is kept in offshore holdings. According to a 2014 Credit Suisse study, the ratio of wealth to household income is the highest it has been since the Great Depression . According to a paper published by the Federal Reserve in 1997, "For most households, pensions and Social Security are the most important sources of income during retirement, and the promised benefit stream constitutes
6083-403: The wealthy strategically organize their money so that it will produce profit. Affluent people are more likely to allocate their money to financial assets such as stocks, bonds, and other investments which hold the possibility of capital appreciation. Those who are not wealthy are more likely to have their money in savings accounts and home ownership. This difference comprises the largest reason for
6162-689: Was criticized by liberals at the time of publication, and its conclusions remain controversial. While writing The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, Moynihan was employed in a political appointee position at the US Department of Labor, hired to help develop policy for the Johnson administration in its War on Poverty . In the course of analyzing statistics related to black poverty, Moynihan noticed something unusual: Rates of black male unemployment and welfare enrollment, instead of running parallel as they always had, started to diverge in 1962 in
6241-407: Was criticized for threatening to undermine the place of civil rights on the national agenda, leaving "a vacuum that could be filled with a politics that blamed Blacks for their own troubles." In 1987, Hortense Spillers , a black woman academic, criticized the Moynihan Report on semantic grounds for its use of "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" when he described the African-American family. She argues that
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