The vast majority of Americans have experienced disappointing living standards growth in the last generation—largely due to rising inequality.

Broad-based wage growth—if we can figure out how to achieve it—would dwarf the impact of nearly every other economic trend or policy in reducing poverty.

The clear connections between wages, income, and living standards mean that progress in reversing inequality, boosting living standards, and alleviating poverty will be extraordinarily difficult without addressing wage growth.

A recent paper confirms that no rise in mobility has occurred over the last generation to either explain or offset the rise in inequality that has been so damaging for the vast majority. And, the United States remains one of the least mobile economies in the industrial world.

While poverty thresholds, generally set at the national level, help to evaluate what it takes for families to live free of serious economic deprivation, the EPI’s Family Budget Calculator offers a broader measure of economic welfare and provides an additional metric for academics and policy experts looking for comprehensive measures of economic security.

Unfortunately, income mobility—movement between income classes—is less common than purveyors of the American Dream would have you believe.

The Inequality.is website brings clarity to the national dialogue on wage and income inequality, using interactive tools and videos to tell the story of how we arrived at the state of inequality we find today and what can be done to reverse course and ensure workers get their fair share.

Blog posts and reports from Elise Gould.

What prosperity is, where growth comes from, why markets work—and how we resolve the tension between a prosperous world and a moral one.

Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France.

Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France.

In a capitalist system, rising inequality creates a death spiral of falling demand that ultimately takes everyone down.

Conard and Hanauer debate whether jobs are created by the 1% or the American middle class.

Rich people don’t create jobs. Jobs are the consequence of a circle of life-like feedback loop between customers and businesses, and only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring.