The Five Biggest Myths About Income Inequality

The Five Biggest Myths About Income Inequality - Forbes

Myth No. 2: People at the bottom of the income ladder are there through no fault of their own.

In a study for the National Center for Policy Analysis, David Henderson found that there is a big difference between families in the top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent of the income distribution:
Families at the top tend to be married and both partners work.
Families at the bottom often have only one adult in the household and that person either works part-time or not at all:

• In 2006, a whopping 81.4 percent of families in the top income quintile had two or more people working, and only 2.2 percent had no one working.
• By contrast, only 12.6 percent of families in the bottom quintile had two or more people working; 39.2 percent had no one working.

The average number of earners per family for the top group was 2.16, almost three times the 0.76 average for the bottom.

Henderson concludes:

“…average families in the top group have many more weeks of work than those in the bottom and, in the late 1970s, the 12-to-1 total income ratio shrunk to only 2-to-1 per week of work, according to one analysis.”

Having children without a husband tends to make you poor. 
Not working makes you even poorer. 
And there is nothing new about that. 
These are age old truths. 
They were true 50 years ago, a hundred years ago and even 1,000 year ago. Lifestyle choices have always mattered.