The Upside Of Income Inequality Summary

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In the story “The Upside of Income Inequality”, Gary S. Becker and Kevin M. Murphy effectively express’s the importance and need for income inequality in our society. Furthermore, Holly Ellyatt’s newspaper article Income Inequality: Is It Good For Everyone? serves to also point out that economic success and greater productivity is linked to “income inequality”. Although it may seem extremely unfair for someone to make up to two hundred and fifty times as much money as someone else, this notion of “income inequality” actually benefits the society as a whole by encouraging others to work much harder in life and better themselves and their education.
For example, the increase of income inequality in the 1980’s greatly increased the education for both women and men and other races such as African Americans. “As the education earnings gap increased, a larger fraction of high school graduates went on to college” ( Becker and Murphy 583). Women’s attendance in college substantially increased from 25% to nearly 65% by 2005. The attendance of men also increased though not quite as much, from 40% in 1980 to nearly 70% in 2005. As income inequality continued to …show more content…

Income inequality acts as a means to “wake people up” and make clear to them their need for higher education and more hard work to obtain more money, and thus, more success. As income inequality increased in China and America, there arose a correlation to the increase among men and women of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Despite the fact that income inequality could cause people to make poor decisions and make them insecure in society, income inequality improves the economic systems in America and other parts of the world by serving as a motivation for people to achieve much greater things in the desires of changing their station in life for a happier