Public News Service
November 12, 2012
From Public News Service:
CHICAGO – The state of Illinois has made the “Top Ten” list – though perhaps not a particularly desirable one to be on.
A new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ranks Illinois ninth in the nation for highest income gap. Over the last decade, the study says, the poorest 20 percent of the state’s population lost more than 15 percent of their income while the wealthiest realized gains of 22 percent.
Amy Rynell, director of research and policy at the Heartland Alliance, says jobs in Illinois just don’t pay enough.
“We’ve seen a tremendous growth in service sector jobs. So, people are thankful to have a job. But they pay very poorly and they often don’t guarantee people 40 hours a week of work, which makes it very hard to make ends meet.”
And she says wealthier Illinoisans have the advantage right from the start. Because schools are funded by property taxes, many children in low-income neighborhoods start out with inferior educations, so they can’t always get the good jobs. She says education funding and the the tax code need updating so that those at the top don’t get all the breaks.
Rynell’s group found the deck stacked against low-income minorities in many ways. For example, she says . . .
“The higher the share of minority population in the area, the lower the share of banks, the lower the share of people with bank accounts, and the higher the prevalence of predatory lending.”
Illinois is not alone. When the researchers crunched the numbers, the story turned out the same in most of the states, as Elizabeth McNichol, with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, points out.
“When the economy has grown, the lion’s share of that has gone to households at the top.”
Over a 30-year period the gap looked even worse. The top five percent in Illinois realized an average 123 percent gain, while those with the lowest income stagnated.
Economists stress that rising inequality is not inevitable, that the gap between rich and poor actually fell between World War II and 1970. And they say it also fell for a brief period during the economic growth of the late ’90s. They say part of that was due to Clinton-era tax policies and a rise in the minimum wage.
The report is at www.cbpp.org.
