This paper surveys the rise of income inequality in affluent nations. Social programs are critical to keeping inequality in check, but their sustainability is increasingly threatened. A possible solution is high levels of employment.

What are the principal sources of posttax-posttransfer inequality in affluent countries? To what extent do inequality of individual earnings, inequality of market household incomes, redistribution, and other factors influence the posttaxposttransfer income distribution? And what do the answers...

Redistribution is one of the principal mechanisms through which countries secure low income inequality. Maintaining moderately high wage levels at the low end of the distribution may be increasingly difficult and perhaps even counterproductive from an egalitarian perspective. If so,...

A commonly-held view suggests that affluent nations face a tradeoff between incomes and jobs. According to this view, in the United States pay for workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution (relative to those in the middle) is very low and government unemployment-related benefits (the...