"If American families with children were a country, that country would have higher levels of net worth inequality than any other country on earth," says Christina Gibson-Davis. Gibson-Davis is an associate professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and a faculty fellow at the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy.
Transcript:
From Duke University, this is "Glad You Asked," where we consider the question, “What should we be talking about this election season?”
"My name is Christina Gibson-Davis. I’m an associate professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy.
So there has been a lot of talk about inequality, people are very concerned that we’re in this new Gilded Age. What I would like to bring to people’s attention, though, are levels of inequality among families with children and how resources among families are really actually more unequally distributed than in the general population.
The top 10 percent of families have access to 80 percent of all the net worth that is out there among families with children. The bottom half of families with children have negative net worth. So there is a huge disparity in how families with children experience income and wealth.
Now, why should we care about this? Why does it matter? Well, it matters a lot. People know that college costs are going up. People know that it’s expensive to get things for their children.
If families at the bottom don’t have any resources to direct towards getting an education for their kids or getting healthcare for their kids, then it becomes not only their problem but society’s problem, because these kids have very compromised life outcomes when they grow up.
If American families with children were a country, we would have higher levels of net worth inequality than any other country on earth.
So what I would like to see politicians pay attention to, even though it’s sort of in some ways less sexy than the billionaire Silicon Valley guy, is what’s happening to families with kids. How comfortable are we living in a society where the bottom 50 percent basically have no net worth?"
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