Income Inequality in NFL

There is significantly greater income inequality in the NFL than in the general U.S. population, with 62.4 percent of team payrolls going to the top fifth of NFL players in 2009, compared to 50.3 percent of total national income going the top quintile of American households. And while the share of income going to the top 20 percent of U.S. households has been constant for more than a decade, payroll inequality in the NFL keeps increasing each year. What lessons can we learn from the escalating income inequality in the NFL?