Abstract

We investigate income, race, class, and sex over the period 1971 to 2023. During this time the income distribution became more extreme where the top percentiles gained greater share of total income versus the lower percentiles that lost share. We propose and then test an empirical approach that incorporates changes in extreme income into a model of race, class and sex. The empirical findings confirm the hypothesis predicting declines in race inequality within the working class, and this pattern obtains for both sexes, however the convergence is steeper with regard to working class males. The findings are discussed in terms of the long-horizon of race/ethnic/sex/class change versus the failure of this change to be perceptually visible year-to-year.

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