Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States information
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Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States discusses how tax policy affects the distribution of income and wealth in the United States. Income inequality can be measured before- and after-tax; this article focuses on the after-tax aspects. Income tax rates applied to various income levels and tax expenditures (i.e., deductions, exemptions, and preferential rates that modify the outcome of the rate structure) primarily drive how market results are redistributed to impact the after-tax inequality. After-tax inequality has risen in the United States markedly since 1980, following a more egalitarian period following World War II.
After a quarter-century of declining inequality following World War II, income inequality increased in the late 1960s and accelerated after 1980 among affluent capitalist democracies. Inequality in wealth and income grew markedly between 1980 and 2009 in the United States, it increased only moderately in most other affluent democracies. By the latter year, the United States had become by far the most inegalitarian among comparable countries.[1][2][3]
^Hacker Jacob S., Pierson Paul. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon & Schustser.
^Wallace, Michael; Hyde, Allen; Vachon, Todd E. (2022-04-01). "States of inequality: Politics, labor, and rising income inequality in the U.S. States since 1950". Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. 78: 100677. doi:10.1016/j.rssm.2022.100677. ISSN 0276-5624.
^Atkinson, A. B. (2015). Inequality: What can be done?. Harvard University Press.
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