The researchers thought that household income might cushion the blow. After all, this is how many traditional societies function. When the main bread-winner’s earnings falter, other sources of income – the work of other family members, cashing in family savings, income from family businesses – kick in.
In the United States, over the past 2-1/2 decades, the household provided a little bit of this type of insurance, but not much. “For total household income,” the study concludes, “the large increase in inequality over our sample period was predominantly, though not entirely, permanent.”
Another institution that could temper the consequences of the growing, structural inequality the authors document is the state. As it happens, like the family, the state softens the impact of permanent inequality a little, but not enough to change the broader trend of a growing and lasting divide.