This chart, taken from the Weldon Cooper Center’s newly published, “Virginia Income Trends, 1980-2010,” illuminates the growing income gap in Virginia. This chart, which shows the growing disparity in wages, has more meaning to me than stats showing the disparity as measured by adjusted gross income reported to the Internal Revenue Service, a commonly cited metric.
If income inequality on the lower end results from the breakdown of the family structure and the rise of single-parent families, the problem is cultural in nature, not economic. Likewise, if income inequality on the upper end arises from an increasing number of two-income families, my reaction is, what’s wrong with that? But if income inequality results from a higher rate of return on education and declining opportunities for Americans with low levels of education — as shown here — the public policy implications are very different.
— JAB
