Exam 18: Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination

Studies of income changes in the United States over time reveal that there is almost no income mobility among quintiles of the distribution of income.

What is a Lorenz curve? How can it be used to show the degree of inequality of income distribution? Given the data for Brazil shown, draw on the graph provided a Lorenz curve. Is the income distribution relatively equal or unequal? Explain how you reached your answer.

If a female professor receives a higher salary than a male professor, this must be due to discrimination.

During the last two decades, the share of income going to the poor has declined in the United States.

The benefits provided to the poor through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are primarily in the form of:

In 2010, only 34 percent of the people below the poverty line in the United States received some form of assistance.

The percentage of the population living in households whose income falls below the poverty line is the:

The demographic group in the United States with the highest poverty rate is:

If blacks are discriminated against in the labor market relative to whites, then the wage paid to blacks will be _______ whites and the number of blacks employed will be ______ whites, all other things equal.

The text concludes that poor people, from their own perspective, would be better off with _______ than with _______ .

Poverty, in large measure (and according to the authors of the text), is a(n) ________ concept.

Between 1968 and 2010, income inequality in the United States:

In the United States since 1999, the gap between the wages of skilled and unskilled workers:

Compare and contrast the issues involved in making choices between the uses of an absolute income test versus a relative income test for defining poverty.

After adjusting for noncash aid, the poverty rate in the United States is:

-(Exhibit: Income Distribution) Curve B:

Much of the decrease in wage differentials between women and blacks vÌs a vÌs white males is due to the acquisition of human capital by women and blacks.

From 1968 to 2010, the share of income going to the rich has _______ and the share going to the poor has _______ .

When people with similar economic characteristics experience different economic outcomes because of their race, sex, or other noneconomic characteristics the result is:

The percentage of families headed by women with no spouse present ________ since 1968 in the United States.