An Inequality Quiz

How much do you know about the distribution of wealth and income in the United States — and the world? Try this little quiz and see.

1. In 1975, the top executive at General Electric took home just over 35 times the income of the typical American family. Twenty-five years later, the top executive at G.E. took home nearly 3,500 times America’s median family income.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

2. The more rich people in a society, the greater the share of that society’s wealth that flows into charities.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

3. The United States has become the most unequal nation in the developed world.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

4. A rise in great fortunes, as President Calvin Coolidge once noted, inevitably brings forth a “widening of culture.”
__ TRUE __ FALSE

5. The best-selling American novel of the entire 19th century, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin, envisioned an America that had eliminated all economic inequality.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

6. In societies becoming more unequal, taxpayers are less likely to fund public services.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

7. Professional sports teams that keep salary differences between their players narrow do better than teams that devote most of their dollars to signing superstars.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

8. Within the United States, states with the most poor have the highest mortality rates.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

9. The founder of modern management theory, Peter Drucker, believes that business enterprises operate most efficiently when executives make no more than twenty times the pay of their average workers.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

10. A President of the United States once proposed what amounted to a maximum wage.
__ TRUE __ FALSE

Ready to see how you fared? The answers.