The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World Book 70)

by Robert J. Gordon

Between 1929 and 1945 incomes at the top grew more slowly than at the middle and the bottom, creating the shift toward greater equality that Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have called “the Great Compression.” Between World War II and 1975, incomes at the top and bottom grew at roughly the same rate, and as a result, the compression lasted for about three decades.