newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ADELE SAMMARCO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

It’s official.

The rich do get richer while the poor do get poorer.

When it comes to Garden State residents, income inequality is visible from Rumson to Newark and evident as money continues to flow to the wealthy, making the gap between the rich and everyone else wider than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1920s.

There are more than two million New Jerseyans living at or just beyond the federal poverty level and the numbers aren’t getting any better.

The state’s wealthy have been getting so rich, according to the new study conducted by the Poverty Research Institute of Legal Services of New Jersey entitled “Income Inequality in New Jersey: The Growing Divide and Its Consequences,” that the distribution of income between 2000 and the end of 2009 reported was extremely one-sided, with more than three quarters of the income gains going to the wealthy in only 20 percent of the state’s households.

An estimated 75,000 people who live comfortably with incomes of at least $570,000 made up more than a quarter of the gains. That's the top one percent of the population in New Jersey.

On the other end of the spectrum, approximately 3 million people in the state made up 40 percent of households with salaries under $34,300 and witnessed their incomes take a beating during the recession.

The report focuses on the repercussions of the great divide between “the haves and have-nots” and suggests that, as new Census figures emerge for New Jersey, the fissure will grow even wider.

Despite a brief dip in income inequality during the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009, the gap between the wealthy and those who are struggling to make-ends-meet has widened in 2010.

Economists predict that when Census figures are released in the next few months, poverty will have increased to its highest level in a half century.

The new Poverty Research Institute report highlights the long-range adverse impacts of income inequality, and the children who have been affected by perpetual poverty.

The study focuses on those who suffer from this vicious cycle, and states “their standards of living may be headed for further decline, consistent with decreased opportunities for moving up and escaping the ranks of the impoverished.”

One recommendation of the study suggests state government officials conduct an “income inequality impact review” to weigh the consequences of the stark change before making any policy decisions.