Publications on Income & Wealth Distribution

Low-wage jobs can be unstable, leaving families struggling to cope with employment gaps and financial emergencies that can strike without warning. About four in five low-income families are "asset poor," lacking enough liquid savings to live for three months at the federal poverty level without earnings. In this essay, McKernan and Ratcliffe suggest a cluster of policies that would improve financial markets and savings opportunities for low-income families across the life cycle.

This paper is a response to New Safety Net Paper 7, "Enabling Families to Weather Emergencies and Develop: The Role of Assets," by Signe-Mary McKernan and Caroline Ratcliffe.

Low-wage jobs can be unstable, leaving families struggling to cope with employment gaps and financial emergencies that can strike without warning. About four in five low-income families are "asset poor," lacking enough liquid savings to live for three months at the federal poverty level without earnings. In this summary, McKernan and Ratcliffe suggest a cluster of policies that would improve financial markets and savings opportunities for low-income families across the life cycle.

Congress enacted a minimum tax in 1969 to guarantee that high-income individuals paid at least some tax. The AMT now threatens to grow from a footnote in the tax code to a major component affecting tens of millions of taxpayers. Although most lower- and middle-income taxpayers will remain unaffected by it, policymakers need to deal with the explosive growth of the AMT from an obscure tax affecting only 20,000 filers in 1970 to one affecting more than 33 million-a third of all taxpayers-by 2010. This document provides updated estimates of AMT participation, revenue, and distribution.

I know. It's campaign time. Time for our politicians to promise us more and more. Of course, it is always someone else who will pick up the tab. Increasingly it is the young who are not only asked to pay more for others and get less for themselves, but who are being denied their fundamental democratic rights to share equally in deciding just what type of government we should have.