Democrats Narrow The Income Gap, Republicans Increase It

11:16 am EST May 28th, 2008 | Democrats, Republicans | 2 Comments

This post brought to you by “Duh!”

Bartels comes to this conclusion by examining what happened to income inequality from President Truman to President George W. Bush. He writes, “Under Democratic presidents, poor families did slightly better than richer families (at least in proportional terms), producing a modest net decrease in income inequality; under Republican presidents, rich families did vastly better than poorer families, producing a considerable net increase in income inequality.”

He concludes that income gap increased under Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and both Bushes, while it declined under four of the five Democratic presidents who have served during this period — all except Jimmy Carter. That pattern, he asserts, “seems hard to attribute to a mere coincidence in the timing of Democratic and Republican administrations.”

Topic: ,

Related Posts

«
»

2 Responses to “Democrats Narrow The Income Gap, Republicans Increase It”

  1. anotherbozo says:
    May 28, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Can;t help wondering whether this information would have mattered to all those progressives who voted for Nader–”Democrat, Republican, what’s the diff?” They sounded SO big-picture…

  2. revenantive says:
    May 28, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    i am sure that you’ve heard the following: “if you want to live like a republican, you need to vote democrat.”