"Meaningless chart. It says absolutely nothing about WHO benefited from the gains of the past 35 years. Why? Because they're not the same people in the quintiles. For several reasons people move among the various quintiles. For example: starting in 1973, and it's not a coincidence, the divorce rate in the United States began to rise. The number of families increased dramatically simply because of divorce. There was also an increase in the number of families headed by single women with children. The quintile breaks-points changed, not because the economy was growing or shrinking but simply because of changes in the types of families."

"The chart is nothing more than political propaganda. It ...

"Meaningless chart. It says absolutely nothing about WHO benefited from the gains of the past 35 years. Why? Because they're not the same people in the quintiles. For several reasons people move among the various quintiles. For example: starting in 1973, and it's not a coincidence, the divorce rate in the United States began to rise. The number of families increased dramatically simply because of divorce. There was also an increase in the number of families headed by single women with children. The quintile breaks-points changed, not because the economy was growing or shrinking but simply because of changes in the types of families."

"The chart is nothing more than political propaganda. It implies that poor people have done poorly while rich people have thrived. Rich people have thrived. But so have poor people. If you look at longitudinal studies of the same people (the Michigan PSID for example) you get a totally different picture than this one. And that's because this one is designed to fulfill a political agenda."

"The left is angry about measured inequality but they can't point to the mechanism that leads to all the poor people being held down. Especially when we know that educational attainment is growing in America and education does lead to higher income."

HT: Russel Roberts, George Mason University, Department of Economics

For several reasons people move among the various quintiles.

Sure, but how common is it for families starting out in the first or second quintiles (the lowest quintiles) to wind up in the fourth or fifth quintiles? Not very. [1]

The chart is nothing more than political propaganda. It implies that poor people have done poorly while rich people have thrived. Rich people have thrived. But so have poor people.

But the graph in this clip shows that poor people thrived much, much more between WWII and 1973.

The left is angry about measured inequality but they can't point to th...

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For several reasons people move among the various quintiles.

Sure, but how common is it for families starting out in the first or second quintiles (the lowest quintiles) to wind up in the fourth or fifth quintiles? Not very. [1]

The chart is nothing more than political propaganda. It implies that poor people have done poorly while rich people have thrived. Rich people have thrived. But so have poor people.

But the graph in this clip shows that poor people thrived much, much more between WWII and 1973.

The left is angry about measured inequality but they can't point to the mechanism that leads to all the poor people being held down.

But this article did just that - the authors argue the culprit is the slowdown in the expansion of tertiary education in the United States.

One other point - the economist kenstipe quotes argues that the growth in inequality is just a statistical artifact caused by shifts in family composition (the increase in single-mother-headed households). I am not really sure why this is supposed to make us feel better about the graph - but it is simply not true that "the quintile breaks-points changed...simply because of changes in the types of families".

We know that inequality in workers' WAGES have grown as well [1], a trend that cannot be explained by changes in family composition. There is something about labor markets that is producing the incre...

One other point - the economist kenstipe quotes argues that the growth in inequality is just a statistical artifact caused by shifts in family composition (the increase in single-mother-headed households). I am not really sure why this is supposed to make us feel better about the graph - but it is simply not true that "the quintile breaks-points changed...simply because of changes in the types of families".

We know that inequality in workers' WAGES have grown as well [1], a trend that cannot be explained by changes in family composition. There is something about labor markets that is producing the increase in income inequality amongst families, contrary to what Russel Roberts would have us believe.