Understanding Changing Inequality within Families in the United States, 1960-2015

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SES-1627479Stephanie MollerJoseph WhitmeyerUniversity of North Carolina at CharlotteFamily income inequality in the United States has increased since the latter half of the twentieth century, reflecting a reversal of a long period of declining income inequality. In explaining this upswing, many researchers have focused on a shrinking middle class and polarization of income. Yet, this explanation is most relevant for White, two parent families. Changes in income inequality have unfolded differently for other family types, a pattern that is often overlooked in the extant literature. As a result, researchers do not yet know whether factors that shape aggregate patterns of inequality apply to changes in income inequality for sub-segments of families by race and family structure. This is an important gap in the literature as the United States is a diverse society. The proposed research will assess the extent that economic, demographic, and political shifts since the 1960s affect household income inequality among diverse families. This research will contribute to data infrastructure by developing two comprehensive, historical datasets: The Comparative U.S. Counties Dataset which will include decennial data 1960-2010 and the Comparative U.S. States Dataset which will include annual data 1960-2015. These data will be combined with household data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to examine the extent that predictors of aggregate changes in inequality explain within-group inequality. The datasets will be distributed to other researchers, and the findings will be distributed through research articles and policy briefs. This project provides invaluable training for a graduate research assistant and opportunities for other graduate students to utilize these data for thesis and dissertation research. The investigators will examine income inequality among subgroups of families, dividing them by race and family structure. The proposed study will include two sets of analyses. First, utilizing decennial census data (1960-2010), the investigators will assign families with children to quintiles of the family income distribution. They will then create county-level measures of the percentage of each family type in each quintile of the income distribution. The investigators will also create a summary measure of inequality within each group. A hierarchical repeated measures model will allow the investigators to assess the extent that theories that help explain changes in aggregate income inequality over time apply to sub-segments of families. In the second set of analyses, the investigators will analyze family income data from the Current Population Survey (1967 to 2015). Families will be disaggregated by race and family structure. Hierarchical quantile regression will assess the extent that economic and labor market, sociodemographic, and political variables explain family income at different locations in the income distribution. These analyses will clarify whether macro level associations identified in the previous step simply reflect different families? exposure to macro shifts (such as part-year employment associated with the rise in precarious work) or if the aggregate patterns predict families? locations in income distributions independent of individual-level demographics, employment and education.