Rising inequality reduced income growth for the bottom 95 percent of the US personal income distribution beginning about 1980. To maintain stable debt to income, this group's consumption-income ratio needed to decline, which did not happen through 2006, and its debt-income ratio rose...

This article compares inequality in US employment across social groups in the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. We develop an inequality measure that captures both how much employment declines during a recession and the persistence of those declines. The results show a significant shift...

Rising inequality reduced income growth for the bottom 95 percent of the US personal income distribution beginning about 1980. To maintain stable debt to income, this group’s consumption-income ratio needed to decline, which did not happen through 2006, and its debt- income ratio rose...