The important Role of Work.

• Author: Henderson, David R.

MANY PEOPLE, INCLUDING many economists, who worry about income inequality overlook the role of work. You might imagine that the rich are generally idle while the poor work their fingers to the bone. But that's not the full picture.

The Department of Commerce's Census Bureau gathers data annually on characteristics of the five income quintiles. One thing that changes very little from year to year is the number of workers per household.

The data for 2018 are no exception. Each quintile that year was made up of 25.7 million households. For the lowest quintile, 16.2 million households had no one working at all during 2018. For the highest quintile. by contrast, only 1.1 million households had no one working. How many households in the bottom quintile had two earners? Only 1.1 million, or 4.3 percent of the total number of households...