Reduce Inequality to Address Affordability

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

In the United States today, the cliché is true: The richer are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The saying has to be revised somewhat since it is the entire bottom 80 percent of households who are getting relatively poorer, not just households in poverty.

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows that the bottom four quintiles all received a smaller share of all income in 2024 than in 1974. For example, the third or middle quintile received...