Caleb Cohen Professor Wilhite WRC-1023 1/25/13 Income Inequality and its Effects on Democracy Income inequality, according

to Investopedia, is The unequal distribution of household or individual income across the various participants in an economy. Simply stated, as the rich get richer the income inequality becomes greater. According to the New York Times between 1983 and 2007 there has been an increase of 13.5% in the income earned by top 1% in the United States thus increasing income inequality. Higher income inequality has shown correlation to many negative factors in the United States alone such as higher crime, lower life expectancy, and financial crisis. Richard Wilkinsons How Economic Inequality Harms Society addresses the issues of economic inequality in first-world democracies. The first shocking part of his presentation comes when he graphs the life expectancy versus gross national income per head, and shows that there is no example of a countrys participants living longer by making more money. The next slide is a graph of life expectancy versus the richest to the poorest neighborhoods in England and Wales. Then the correlation becomes obvious with the richest neighborhoods living to just over seventy-nine years on average and the poorest at about 71 years. Richard Wilkinson brings up a solid point that income between nations does not affect the

Cohen 2 well being of its citizens, but the income relative to the citizens of its own nation has a heavy impact on its citizens. For the United States, rises in income inequality have also been a huge indicator poor economic events.

Share of the Nations Income Earned by the Top 1 Percent by The New York Time According to this graph, heavy spikes have lead to very serious economic problems like the Great Depression in 1928 or the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007. A significant issue which is an example of economic inequality as a detriment to Democracy is the Gender-Wage Gap when one compared all employed women with all employed men, including part-timers as well as full-timers, women only earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by men (Williams)

Cohen 3 Its revolting that women only earn slightly more than half of what men make on average. Even though men might have families I think that this is way to low considering single mothers. Economic inequality in recent years has caused many problems to democracy, especially in such large gaps seen in the United States. According to Richard Wilkinson how much an individual in a country makes but how the wealth is distributed in each particular country.

Cohen 4

Works Cited
Harrington, Craig. Income Inequality Hurting U.S Economy. 22 July 2011. 24 February 2013 <http://economyincrisis.org/content/income-inequality-hurting-useconomy>. N/A. Economic Inequality. 19 February 2013. 24 February 2013 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality >. . Income Inequality. N/A N/A N/A. 23 Febuary 2013 <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/income-inequality.asp#axzz2LmY5fq2U>. . Income Inequality. 23 February 2013 <inequality.org/income-inequality/>. Times, New York. Share of the Nations Income Earned by the Top 1 Percent. 25 October 2011. 24 February 2013 <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/26/nyregion/the-new-gildedage.html?ref=politics>. Williams, Joan C. The Gender Pay Gap Grossly Underestimates Women's Economic Inequality. 20 August 2010. 24 February 2013 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-williams/the-gender-pay-gapgrossl_b_687779.html>.