Article Summary
Recent studies about wealth inequality and income inequality indicate that the American public's estimates of the distribution of wealth and income
are quite different than actual data suggests. With respect to wealth, the top 20 percent of households hold more than 84% and the bottom 40 percent
hold less than 1%, yet the public's estimates were 59% and 9%, respectively. In terms of income inequality, the public estimated that the CEO-to-worker
pay-ratio was 30-to-1, whereas data suggests the actual ratio is 354-to-1, up from 20-to-1 in the 1960s.
President Obama has referred to economic inequality as "the defining challenge of our time," and although Americans seem to recognize that income
and wealth gaps have widened, only 5 percent indicate that this inequality is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Source: Nicholas Fitz, "Economic Inequality: It's Far Worse Than You Think," Scientific American, March 31, 2015.
Refer to the Article Summary. The article discusses income inequality, and for some people this means a more equitable distribution of income is needed in the
economy. What is meant by a more equitable distribution of income?
a more fair distribution of income
Income distributed based on skill levels
a more allocatively efficient distribution of income
a more productively efficient distribution of income
