Evaluating public policy

Question1

The world is rapidly changing. With it, the distribution of income among the people of the United States has become a major political and philosophical debate. Our group has chosen to investigate the inequality in the distribution of income and discrimination. We all hear about the old statement: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Well, this seems to be the case. Right now, we have 3 classes: the lower class, the middle class, and the upper class. Data suggests that there are less people and families in the middle. More people are falling into the lower class. The upper class seems to remain the same.

Income disparities have become so pronounced that America’s top 10 percent now average more than nine times as much income as the bottom 90 percent. Americans in the top 1 percent tower stunningly higher. They average over 39 times more income than the bottom 90 percent. But that gap pales in comparison to the divide between the nation’s top 0.1 percent and everyone else. Americans at this lofty level are taking in over 188 times the income of the bottom 90 percent.

(“Income Inequality,” 2019)

From this, the population are all the men and women of the United States. Our target population is the combination of the lower class and the upper class. The perception is that the rich stay where they are. They will feel the hit when the markets suffer, and the economy is struggling. The difference is that it is easier for the rich to bounce back, compared to the lower class.

The discrimination may come in many forms. Studies have shown that women tend to make less then men, doing the same work. It has been a long time since women have joined the workforce and certainly deserve the same responsibilities, rights, recognition, and compensation for the work that they do. If a female is doing the same work as a male, wouldn’t it be socially acceptable and correct to pay each the same amount? The answer should be a resounding yes.

Other forms of discrimination come in the form of ethnic discrimination and racial discrimination. Numerous studies have linked ethnicity to income discrimination. It seems to be that African Americans and Latinos earn less than Caucasians and Asians. Unfortunately, this seems to have been the case in the past. The perception, held by mainstream society, is still the notion of a wealthy business man in a nice tie and suit would most likely be either Caucasian or Asian. This stereotype can be seen in movies, commercials, and even magazines. We want to believe that we are past the days of the Jim Crow laws, but the reality is that people still have their beliefs that have been passed down from parent to child. We are slowly evolving to incorporate all people equally. For example, not long ago, we had the first African American voted into the highest position in the land. We see more and more people, from minority groups, in influential positions. We are on a path to see that a person’s abilities, attributes, and successes supersede the color of their skin or where they were born. It will probably take longer than we would like, but we seem to be heading in the right direction.

Question2

Question3

After careful review and deep thought in the best method to administer this survey, I believe the best method would be the Face to Face method. At first thought, the internet method would be the best and quickest way, after studying our target audience, the lower and upper class, I feel as though we would get a biased result given that many lower-class people whom have been left behind, might not have the greatest number of people with a computer, online access or the tech savvy skills. Mail method would be the best access to all, however, this would be a long, slow and arduous process to get all the results, therefore face to face seems the best to me. We could have survey takers meet with our target audience, conduct the survey and have immediate results.

The best sampling frame for this survey would be to use a specific geographical location, such as a city, then the frame in that city would be all people that have filed a tax return for the previous year. With this sample frame, we will have a well-defined population to survey that meet our survey goals. We have a location to deal with bringing our sampling size to a manageable number, then with the frame of surveying people with tax returns, we have identified working people and we can then compare incomes amongst the upper and lower earners. This will allow us to get real results and help us to determine the reasons behind income inequality.

The sample we use will be 100 of the lowest earners and 100 of the highest earners according to the available data gathered from who has filed tax returns on income.

References

Income Inequality. (2019) Retrieved from https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/