19.4%

20.0%

22.2%

20.5%

21.4%

22.7%

57.8%

51.7%

45.3%

44.4%

45.1%

42.4%

TABLE 15.7 Income Distribution in Select Countries (Source: U.S. data from U.S. Census Bureau Table H-1. Other

data from The World Bank Poverty and Inequality Data Base, https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-

indicators/themes/poverty-and-inequality.html)

LINK IT UP

Visit this website (http://openstax.org/l/inequality/) to watch a video of wealth inequality across the world.

Causes of Growing Inequality: The Changing Composition of American Households

In 1970, 41% of married women were in the labor force, but by 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor

Statistics, 58.6% of married women were in the labor force. One result of this trend is that more households

have two earners. Moreover, it has become more common for one high earner to marry another high earner. A

few decades ago, the common pattern featured a man with relatively high earnings, such as an executive or a
{"uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a", "creator": "PDFMiner", "file_type": ".pdf", "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "total_pages": 597, "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)", "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:37:44.339247", "batch_upload": true, "source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "file_size_mb": 26.99}