home. In calculating wealth, one must subtract all debts, such as debt owed on a home mortgage and on credit

cards. A retired person, for example, may have relatively little income in a given year, other than a pension or Social

Security. However, if that person has saved and invested over time, the person’s accumulated wealth can be quite

substantial.

In the United States, the wealth distribution is more unequal than the income distribution, because differences in

income can accumulate over time to make even larger differences in wealth. However, we can measure the degree

of inequality in the wealth distribution with the same tools we use to measure the inequality in the income

distribution, like quintile measurements. Once every three years the Federal Reserve Bank publishes the Survey of

Consumer Financewhich reports a collection of data on wealth.

Even if they cannot answer the question of how much inequality is too much, economists can still play an
{"total_pages": 597, "uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a", "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:24:38.309401", "file_type": ".pdf", "file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "creator": "PDFMiner", "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "batch_upload": true, "source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "file_size_mb": 26.99, "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)"}