The Increasing Income Inequality Among Children

As the proportion of the population of children decreases and the United States is increasingly exposed to global economic competition, children's economic well-being will become a major public policy issue. This study investigated the changes in income inequality among children from 1969 to 1979, 1979 to 1989, and 1969 to 1989 and compared them with the changes among adults and elderly people during the same periods. The major findings were that (1) income inequality among children increased at a faster rate than among adult and elderly groups, whether it was measured at the pretransfer stage or the posttransfer stage, and (2) the increased income inequality among children was due, in part, to the declining effectiveness of public income transfers-especially social insurance benefits-in lessening income inequality among children.