Education and Income Inequality

Prior to beginning work on the Final Paper, read Steven Strauss’ article, The Connection Between Education, Income Inequality, and Unemployment (Links to an external site.). In your Final Paper, you should address the following based on the information presented in the article and other research:

• Describe how a country can measure its income inequality.
• Evaluate the effect of income inequality on the U.S. economy, such as unemployment, economic growth, and other economic factors.
• Estimate the gap between those who hold bachelor’s and higher (master or doctoral) degrees and those who do not.
• Explain reasons why the inequality gap between educated and less-educated workers has been widening.
• Evaluate whether increasing opportunities for higher education can reduce income inequality.
• Analyze what else causes U.S. income inequality to widen.
• Recommend how to reduce educationally based income inequality or other factors if you were a federal policy maker.

The Education and Income Inequality Final Paper

• Must be eight to 10 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style resource (Links to an external site.).
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least five scholarly, peer-reviewed, and/or other credible sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper guide (Links to an external site.).
• (Links to an external site.)Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.