This study investigated income disparity in the United States with a focus on race/ethnicity, education, and gender as explanatory variables. Five research questions (three primary and two secondary) were investigated. The study found that income disparities existed in income levels based on race/ethnicity, gender, and formal educational attainment. Minority populations and females fare worse than whites and males in relation to income. Subsidiary research indicated that educational levels were higher among whites than among minority population groups and among males than among females. The conclusion drawn that, while income disparities exist between whites and minority populations and between males and females, the underlying cause may be social factors that cause levels of formal educational attainment to be lower among minority population groups and females, as opposed to overt discrimination in relation to income.
As the American population continues to become more diverse racially, members of visible minority groups within the population become more prominent. Simultaneously with the increase in diversity, income distribution in the American economy has become more distorted. While economic growth in the United States surged over the past decade, the income gap also widened, not only between the richest and poorest Americans, but also between moderate-income and low-income Americans (Coleman, 2003).
Members of visible minorities in the population tend to be represented disproportionately in the low-income and poverty classifications in the United States. While there is an abundance of implications of this state of affairs, one of the more crucial ones is access to resources to maintain acceptable standards of emotional health. Individual and household financial capacity, the scarcity of employer-paid health insurance among small businesses, cultural differences based in social psychology, and other factors frequen...