This article uses data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances and from
recent waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to update a study of
economic inequality in the United States based on 1992 and earlier data. The
article reports data on the U.S. distributions of earnings, income, and wealth and
on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational
attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the economic inequality
among U.S. households in financial trouble and on the economic mobility of
U.S. households. The article finds that earnings, income, and wealth were very
unequally distributed among U.S. households late in the 1990s, just as they had
been at the beginning of the decade. It concludes that the basic facts about
economic inequality in the United States did not change much during the
1990s.Publicad
