Income Inequality In America Essay

Income Inequality in America Income inequality in the United States is the highest it has ever been since 1928, and when compared to most other developed countries the U.S. is more unequal in its monetary aspects (Desilver, 2014). To understand this statement it must first be addressed about what income inequality means. Income inequality is the unequal distribution of income whether it be through the number of jobs available or the wage in which a person earns for doing a certain job. This unequal distribution is important because over the years the gap between the wealthy and the poor has continued to grow. The continuous growth in the gap effects many things not only the economy and that is why the government should put into effect policies
Take for the fact that since 1980 the infant mortality rate in the United States has more than doubled and the U.S. teenage birthrate is highest compared to other developed countries (Porter, 2015). There has also been an increase in the number of single parent families due to teenage pregnancies because one parent feels that it is burden to take on a child when they have no hope for providing for them due to cut backs in the job industry. Another social change that is due to income inequality is the rise in incarceration rates (Porter, 2015). This is due to the fact that many poor working Americans can’t find jobs, so they turn to theft and other illegal things as a way of providing for their families. One last social change that is seen is the college enrollment rates of the low income Americans has ceased to grow and this is because those with a college degree are having a harder time finding jobs than those with just a high school education or their GED (Porter, 2015). Therefore this leads them to believe that having a college education is unimportant and also since they are part of the lower income earning Americans they have trouble paying for a college education in the first