Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Bradley Hardy

Income Inequality in the United States, 1975-2022

Bradley Hardy, Distinguished Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

Abstract: We examine trends in household disposable income inequality and potential mechanisms shaping inequality through changes to work, wages, earnings, marriage, and the tax and transfer system in the United States over the nearly five-decade period from 1975 to 2022. Overall after-tax and transfer income inequality increased more than 25 percent since the mid-1970s, and by as much as 50 per cent when comparing the 90th and 10th percentiles. While there has been substantial upgrading in formal education credentials among both men and women – an inequality-reducing development – those with fewer credentials have increasingly been less likely to work and marry, each of which could result in higher inequality. The latter effects are exacerbated by those selecting into marriage and cohabitation being more likely to partner with those holding similar educational credentials and earning power. Moreover, the decline in work among the less skilled coincided with the transformation of the safety net to rewarding work. These demographic and policy changes have resulted in a pulling apart of the US income distribution.  

Bradley Hardy is a Distinguished Professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. He serves as a research affiliate of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty, the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy, the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, and the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. 

Professor Hardy's research examines intra and inter-generational economic outcomes across three overlapping themes: income and consumption volatility among low-income and disadvantaged families, analysis of U.S. income transfer policies and programs for low-income families, and the role of race and place as determinants of economic and policy outcomes. He explores the factors that shape the well-being of families and children—including parental and spatial economic conditions, public policies, and varying forms of structural social and economic inequality. Throughout his work, he considers how safety net programs can act as buffers against exposure to economic risk. Within the school, he teaches courses on microeconomics and public finance. He has provided expert testimony for congress and local governmental commissions, as well as commentary for news and media outlets, including CNBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and Vox. 

Hardy's professional activities includes service as president-elect of the National Economic Association, membership on the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics, and elected membership in the National Academy of Social Insurance. He is a coeditor at Contemporary Economic Policy, and recently served on a National Academies of Science panel focused on studying improvements to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, and is currently serving on a separate National Academies of Science panel assessing federal policy impacts on child poverty in 2021. Prior to joining Georgetown, Hardy was a faculty member in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University, where he held leadership roles as Department Chair and Director of the master of public policy program.