Is Age the Forgotten Explanation In Inequality Discourse?

Many Redditors have come to this sub asking about inequality concerns, either of income or wealth. In particular, we've had several discussions recently about the inaccurate concept of the "K-Shaped Economy."

I came across a substack post that, while not at the level of an economics journal, does make a set of critical points that I think are too often overlooked in both contemporary discourse on inequality and in the literature on inequality: age is the most important variable in the population for correlation with income and wealth levels (at least for the U.S. data the author considers). The author includes apparently well-sourced charts and graphs, so this is not merely a vibes-based analysis. And the ultimate conclusion is obvious: income and especially wealth differences are driven mostly by age, and we should be careful about policies to address inequality that don't take that into account.

Knowing how relatively youthful Reddit (although possibly not this sub) skews, mistaken comparisons of income and wealth inequality that ignore the importance of age, time in the workforce, and time to save/compounding could lead to serious misunderstandings about what causes inequality and how unequal contemporary economies truly are over the lifecycle of an individual. That in turn could lead to policies that are economically harmful and that don't address unearned inequality well.

When we talk about inequality, especially inequality of wealth, are we too often forgetting to consider the enormous impact that age has on income and wealth disparities?