Inequality

In the United States, women’s earnings rose from 60% of men’s earnings in 1979 to 69% in 1989. This increase was the result of cultural and legal developments in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited gender discrimination in the workplace. Other significant factors include the women’s rights movements, as well as the ability for younger women to delay having children, according to a 2012 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Studies have shown that inequality in the U.S. has been on the rise for decades, with the top earners enjoying astronomical gains and average Americans coping with stagnating incomes. These studies typically rely on annual income data, however, which may overstate inequality: low earners in one year may be high earners the next.

From fundraising and campaigning to organization and voter recruitment, the Internet has changed electoral politics in America. Because of the Web’s inherently open nature, it was thought that its use would reduce the socioeconomic inequality in U.S. politics, where more affluent citizens and groups often have higher participation rates and thereby exert greater power.

How the United States government measures levels of poverty has changed little since the bureaucracy began making official estimates in the 1960s. Many observers have noted that the official statistical model has not kept up with the times: for example, it does not take fully into account rising medical costs, and it uses a multiplier of food costs as an index by which to set the official poverty income line for households. (Food costs have shrunk historically as part of the family budget.)