A new study points to income inequality (the gap between those making most of the income and those making the least) as one of the main culprits for a country’s lagging economy. The United States’ income inequality is currently very high — and yet, some states are faring worse than others. Florida ranks “as the fifth-worst state in the nation on a measure of income inequality,” the Gini Index, according to the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy . Mother Jones reports that “equality” in income remains one of the most important “economic drivers” in an economy: “Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells,” says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development , the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund.