Growing income gap poses Obama challenge

ATLANTA, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's efforts to reduce an income-growth gap between the wealthy and other Americans face daunting challenges, statistics show.

On a national level, the Economic Mobility Project, a research group supported by several foundations from across the political spectrum, says the poorest 20 percent of U.S. households now earn only 3.4 percent of total income, a 15 percent drop over two decades, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday.

Closing the wage gap is the subject of a task force appointed by Obama and headed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

Georgia, like other U.S. states, is seeing an accelerating gap in income growth between its wealthiest residents and the middle class, U.S. Census data show, the newspaper said.

Figures indicate the number of Georgia households making more than $200,000 a year jumped more than 70 percent between 2000 and 2007, while the number of households making less than $75,000 stayed relatively stagnant. Other data showed that while the average household income of Georgia's richest 5 percent jumped more than 10 percent from 2006 to 2007, the middle 20 percent's average income rose less than half as much, the Journal-Constitution reported.