Tag Archives: Great Recession

The U.S. has been consistently urbanizing, especially for the past 100 years. Technology advances in manufacturing, agriculture, mining, fishing and forestry accelerated migration from rural to urban areas.

While the economy is steadily improving, this recovery has done little or nothing for the household budgets of many middle-class and low-income Americans. This dynamic is dramatically illustrated by data compiled by economist Emmanuel Saez, which show that the top 1 percent of Americans reaped 58 percent of all income gains from 2009 to 2014. Meanwhile, median wages have been stagnant …

America’s most typical adults would be three-times richer if the United States distributed wealth as equally as France does.

Fifty years on from the Great Society program, what has been achieved – and what hasn’t – in government efforts to reduce poverty.