WASHINGTON: US inequality has become so extreme that hyperbolic headlines about how much wealth is in the hands of a few families in this country have ceased to shock.
Three researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reviewed the recent literature on the issue to examine whether “the changing distribution of wealth intensified and lengthened the effects” of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
“It is important to ask whether the widening gap between the rich and poor has any direct effects on macroeconomic aggregates and, in particular, on the severity of the Great Recession, when output and consumption dropped precipitously and were slow to recover,
