Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from Pacific Standard, author Tom Jacobs highlights a recent study from University of La Verne researchers which suggests that economic liberalization results in economic growth, but only for the wealthiest 0.1% of people.

• If government is to continue employing liberal economics, how can the nonprofit sector try to guarantee that the benefits of growth are felt by the rich and poor alike?

• To learn about how the meaning of the American dream has changed over time, click here.

New research that examines 15 major nations over four decades finds the benefits of economic liberalization—that is, the relaxed regulations favored by economic conservatives—disproportionately accrue to a far smaller percentage of the population.

In the long run, such policies "increase the income of the top 0.1 percent, but do not return significant results for the incomes of the top 1 percent and the top 10 percent," sociologists Roy Kwon and Brianna Salcido of the University of La Verne report. "No discernible effect of liberalization is observed for the incomes of the bottom 90 percent."

If you've wondered why economic populism has been on the rise among both those on the left and right—and why major figures in the Democratic Party are releasing tax-the-rich proposals—these figures provide a highly plausible answer.

"In response to the stagflation of the 1970s, many developed countries around the world started a longstanding effort to implement [right-wing] economic policies in hopes of jump-starting their stagnant national economies," the researchers write. The evidence, they conclude, suggests these policies increased economic growth, but the study "casts further doubt on whether the fruits of [these policies] benefit all, or even most, members of advanced industrial societies."

Read the full article about economic liberalizationp by Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard