A new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office supports the idea that income inequality has grown considerably over the past few decades. The report found that household income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007 for the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. For the rest of the top fifth of the country, it grew by 65 percent. By contrast, the bottom fifth of the population saw its income grow by just 18 percent.
The NewsHour's economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has been exploring the consequences of those trends in previous stories he has done in his series.
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