What refers to the unequal distribution of wealth power prestige and other things that make for a satisfying life?

Income inequality is how unevenly income is distributed throughout a population. The less equal the distribution, the higher income inequality is. Income inequality is often accompanied by wealth inequality, which is the uneven distribution of wealth. Populations can be divided up in different ways to show different levels and forms of income inequality such as income inequality by gender or race. Different measures, such as the Gini coefficient, can be used to analyze the level of income inequality in a population.

• Income inequality studies help to show the disparity of incomes among different population segments.
• When analyzing income inequality, researchers commonly study distributions based on gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and occupation.
• Case studies and analyses of income inequality, income disparity, and income distributions are provided regularly by a variety of top sources.
• The Gini Index is a popular way to compare income inequalities universally across the globe.

Income inequality and income disparity segregations can be analyzed through a variety of segmentation. Segmentations of income disparity analysis are used for analyzing different types of income distributions. Income distributions by demographic segmentation form the basis for studying income inequality and income disparity.

The different types of income segmentations studied when analyzing income inequality may include distributions for:

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Geographic location
• Occupation
• Historical income

There are several prominent case studies and analysis reports providing insight on income inequality, income disparity, and income distributions in the U.S. and across the world.

The Urban Institute is one source for insight on income inequality. In an analysis of 50 years of economic data by the Urban Institute, the institution showed that the poorest got poorer while the richest got much richer.

Between 1963 and 2016:

• The poorest 10% of Americans went from having zero assets to being $1,000 in debt.
• Families in the middle-income segment more than doubled their prior average wealth.
• Families in the top 10% had more than five times their prior wealth.
• Families in the top 1% had more than seven times their prior wealth.

The Urban Institute also researches the racial and ethnic wealth gap in the U.S. The organization reported that White families in 1963 had amassed a median wealth of approximately $45,000 more than families of color. By 2019, the median wealth for White families increased to approximately $153,000 more than Latinx families and $165,000 more than Black families.

The Federal Reserve provides a quarterly Distributional Financial Accounts report. This report shows wealth distributions for U.S. households. As of the first quarter of 2021, the Federal Reserve showed the following distributions of wealth across the U.S.

The Economic Policy Institute released a 2018 report showing a general trend toward increasing incomes of the top earners following the 2008 recession. Between 2009 and 2015, the Economic Policy Institute shows that the incomes of those in the top 1% grew faster than the incomes of the other 99% in 43 states and Washington D.C.

There can be many factors associated with this trend, including salary stagnation for wage-earning Americans, tax cuts for the richest Americans, a loss of manufacturing jobs, and a soaring stock market that inflated the worth of corporate executives and hedge fund managers.

Post-recession, companies are also investing heavily to hire and keep workers with specialized skills in fields such as engineering and healthcare. This has caused reductions or new automation takeovers in other functions, pushing down wages for workers in less competitive jobs.

Furthermore, EPI data tracks wages by segment on a regular basis. As of 2020, it showed the following averages for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics.

Income inequality is an economic concept that tends to hit some segments of populations harder than others, with significant wage gaps often identified for women, Blacks, and Hispanics working in the U.S. According to a study of 2020 income numbers by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, women of all races and ethnicities were paid an average of 82.3% of the salaries paid to men.

Historically, that's the narrowest that the gap has ever been. It has been improving year by year since 1980 when women made about 64% as much as men.

Data from the Pew Research Center also identifies income inequalities by gender. The Pew Research Center shows that the gender income inequality gap has been narrowing for all workers age 16+ with women reportedly making 84% of the average salaries for men. The income disparity was smaller among workers ages 25 to 34. Within this group, women were making approximately 93% of men’s salaries in 2020.

An income gap refers to the difference in income earned between demographic segments.

The Gini Index was developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in the early 1900s to help quantify and more easily compare income inequality levels across countries of the world. The index can range from 0 to 100 with a higher level showing greater income inequality among a country’s population and vice versa. Data from the World Bank shows South Africa reporting one of the highest income inequality dispersions with a Gini Index level of 63.0. According to the World Bank, the United States reports a Gini Index level of 41.4. Slovenia shows the World Bank’s lowest Gini Index reading at 24.6.

Dispersions of income inequality are an ongoing area of analysis for both local and global governing institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have a goal to help improve the income of the lowest 10% of earners in all countries seeking to provide comprehensive global support. Globally, new innovations in financial technologies and productions are also helping to improve the banking services of the world’s lowest-income earners as a worldwide initiative for financial inclusion is underway.

Social inequality results from a society organized by hierarchies of class, race, and gender that unequally distributes access to resources and rights.

It can manifest in a variety of ways, like income and wealth inequality, unequal access to education and cultural resources, and differential treatment by the police and judicial system, among others. Social inequality goes hand in hand with social stratification.

Social inequality is characterized by the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society. It contains structured and recurrent patterns of unequal distributions of goods, wealth, opportunities, rewards, and punishments.

Racism, for example, is understood to be a phenomenon whereby access to rights and resources is unfairly distributed across racial lines. In the context of the United States, people of color typically experience racism, which benefits white people by conferring on them white privilege, which allows them greater access to rights and resources than other Americans.

There are two main ways to measure social inequality:

• Inequality of conditions
• Inequality of opportunities

Inequality of conditions refers to the unequal distribution of income, wealth, and material goods. Housing, for example, is inequality of conditions with the homeless and those living in housing projects sitting at the bottom of the hierarchy while those living in multi-million dollar mansions sit at the top.

Another example is at the level of whole communities, where some are poor, unstable, and plagued by violence, while others are invested in by businesses and government so that they thrive and provide safe, secure, and happy conditions for their inhabitants.

Inequality of opportunities refers to the unequal distribution of life chances across individuals. This is reflected in measures such as level of education, health status, and treatment by the criminal justice system.

For example, studies have shown that college and university professors are more likely to ignore emails from women and people of color than they are to ignore those from white men, which privileges the educational outcomes of white men by channeling a biased amount of mentoring and educational resources to them.

Discrimination of an individual, community, and institutional levels is a major part of the process of reproducing social inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexuality. For example, women are systematically paid less than men for doing the same work.

There are two main views of social inequality within sociology. One view aligns with the functionalist theory, and the other aligns with conflict theory.

1. Functionalist theorists believe that inequality is inevitable and desirable and plays an important function in society. Important positions in society require more training and thus should receive more rewards. Social inequality and social stratification, according to this view, lead to a meritocracy based on ability.
2. Conflict theorists, on the other hand, view inequality as resulting from groups with power dominating less powerful groups. They believe that social inequality prevents and hinders societal progress as those in power repress the powerless people to maintain the status quo. In today's world, this work of domination is achieved primarily through the power of ideology, our thoughts, values, beliefs, worldviews, norms, and expectations, through a process known as cultural hegemony.

Sociologically, social inequality can be studied as a social problem that encompasses three dimensions: structural conditions, ideological supports, and social reforms.

Structural conditions include things that can be objectively measured and that contribute to social inequality. Sociologists study how things like educational attainment, wealth, poverty, occupations, and power lead to social inequality between individuals and groups of people.

Ideological supports include ideas and assumptions that support the social inequality present in a society. Sociologists examine how things such as formal laws, public policies, and dominant values both lead to social inequality, and help sustain it. For example, consider this discussion of the role that words and the ideas attached to them play in this process.

Social reforms are things such as organized resistance, protest groups, and social movements. Sociologists study how these social reforms help shape or change social inequality that exists in a society, as well as their origins, impact, and long-term effects.

Today, social media plays a large role in social reform campaigns and was harnessed in 2014 by British actress Emma Watson, on behalf of the United Nations, to launch a campaign for gender equality called #HeForShe.