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TRENDS & EMPIRICS

Inequality in its broadest conceptualization refers to an array of positions along a distribution.  This might seem overly abstract, but it summarizes a simple intuition.  If ten people sit around a cake and each gets a tenth of the cake, position around the cake does not matter for how much cake anyone gets. Inequality alters that, since unequally sized slices imply that where you sit might mean you get a lot of cake or very little. A significant body of work by scholars of inequality and a significant amount of work by translators of research for non-technical audiences have focused on laying down and documenting inequality in this very general sense.  In this section we have chosen to present material that attempts to map distributional patterns and dynamics. Scholars such as Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson, Joseph Stiglitz, public intellectuals such as Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, and Richard Reeves at the Brookings Institute, have stimulated contemporary awareness by mapping out the broad contours of the distribution of income and wealth, its consequences, and possible solutions. Given the importance of this branch of work in research and dissemination, we have set aside a section of our website for this material.

FEATURED RESOURCES

Books, Reports, and Scholarly Publications

  • Atkinson, A. B. 2015. Inequality: What Can Be Done? Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Azmanova, Albena. 2020. Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change without Crisis or Utopia. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Blanchard, Olivier, and Dani Rodrik, eds. 2021. Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government’s Role. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
  • Boushey, Heather. 2021. Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It. First Harvard University Press paperback edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England London: Harvard University Press.
  • Boushey, Heather, James Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum, eds. 2017. After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press.
  • CBO. 2019. Projected Changes in the Distribution of Household Income, 2016 to 2021. Congress of the United States Congressional Budget Office. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-12/55941-CBO-Household-Income.pdf.
  • Chait, Jonathan. 2007. The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  • Corak, Miles. 2013. “Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27(3): 79–102.
  • Deaton, Angus. 2015. The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. First paperback printing. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  • Eubanks, Virginia. 2019. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. First Picador edition. New York: Picador St. Martin’s Press.
  • Galbraith, James K. 2016. Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Hellebrandt, Tomas, and Paolo Mauro. 2016. World on the Move: Consumption Patterns in a More Equal Global Economy. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics.
  • Henderson, Rebecca. 2021. Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.
  • Hoffmann, Florian, David S. Lee, and Thomas Lemieux. 2020. “Growing Income Inequality in the United States and Other Advanced Economies.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(4): 52–78.
  • Lardner, James and David A. Smith, eds. 2005. Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences. New York: New Press.
  • Mazzucato, Mariana. 2020. The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. First trade paperback edition. New York: Public Affairs.
  • Mazzucato, Mariana. 2021. Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. New York: Harper Business.
  • Milanović, Branko. 2012. The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality. Paperback first published in 2012 by Basic Books. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.
  • Milanović, Branko. 2018. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. First Harvard University Press paperback edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • Newcomb, Steven T. 2008. Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub.
  • O’Brien, Paul. 2021. Power Switch: How We Can Reverse Extreme Inequality. Winchester, UK ; Washington, USA: Changemakers Books.
  • Payne, Keith. 2017. The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. New York: Viking.
  • Pearl, Morris, and Erica Payne. 2021. Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer. New York: The New Press.
  • Petrou, Karen. 2021. Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America. First Edition. Hoboken: Wiley.
  • Phillips, Ben. 2020. How to Fight Inequality: And Why That Fight Needs You. Medford: Polity.
  • Piketty, Thomas. 2015. The Economics of Inequality. Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • Piketty, Thomas, and Arthur Goldhammer. 2020. Capital and ideology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Reich, Robert B. 2020. The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  • Saez, Emmanuel, and Gabriel Zucman. 2020. The Triumph of Injustice. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
  • Saez, Emmanuel, and Gabriel Zucman. 2020. “The Rise of Income and Wealth Inequality in America: Evidence from Distributional Macroeconomic Accounts.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(4): 3–26.
  • Scheidel, Walter. 2017. The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  • Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2013. The Price of Inequality. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
  • Wilkinson, Richard G., and Kate Pickett. 2011. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Paperback edition. New York London Oxford New Delhi Sydney: Bloomsbury Press.

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