The Rich Get Richer

Inequality of wages among workers and inequality of income and wealth among families and households has been rising steadily for the past half-century in the United States and other developed economies. However, the United States stands out for having the most unequal wage and income distributions to begin with and for experiencing the fastest rise in inequality over the following decades. While this has been a long-developing situation and the subject of academic interest for some time, it is only in the last decade or so that inequality has attracted considerable public attention and become a political issue. Inequality has also become a subject of renewed interest among economists, with a growing number of scholars engaged in the development of new databases and the analysis of the causes and effects of increased inequality.

This book provides an overview of the economic analysis of wage, income and wealth inequality in the United States, with a focus on this recent research. It provides the reader with an understanding of the complex causes of rising inequality, the serious consequences that make rising inequality an issue for public policy, and the potential policy actions that might be taken to slow or reverse rising inequality. The author presents an economic and statistical analysis in clear non-technical language to allow the general reader or student in an undergraduate course to learn the insights that economists have gained into the issue of inequality in advanced economies.

The book contends that rising wage inequality among workers and income and wealth inequality among families reflects the complex interaction of profound changes in the US economy over the last half-century. These are not limited to economic changes like new technology, increased globalization, changes in the internal structure of firms, and the rise of new growth sectors in tech, finance, and health care. Of additional critical importance are changes in public opinion and political platforms and policies that replaced the New Deal view of the economic role of government with a pro-business, free-market philosophy that has changed labor market policy in a direction promoting increased inequality. This major change in the environment raises important questions about the efficacy of policy proposals. An additionally intriguing issue is the ultimate impact of the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic on perceptions of and support for government policies designed to reverse the seemingly inexorable trend toward greater inequality. This book traces the evolution of inequality over time through key concept illustrations and language that is easy enough to understand, even for the general reader.

Contents:

• Introduction:

  • The Record
  • Causes
  • Consequences
  • Cures
  • Summary

• Concepts, Measures and Evidence of Wage Inequality:

  • Measures of Inequality
  • An International Comparison
  • Gender and Race
  • Top Wage and Salary Earners
  • Worker Mobility
  • Summary

• Technological Change and Wage Inequality:

  • Creative Destruction
  • Skill-Biased Technological Change
  • Job Polarization
  • Summary

• Globalization:

  • International Trade
  • Offshoring
  • International Financial Flows
  • Immigration
  • Global Inequality
  • Summary

• Institutional Changes:

  • Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets
  • Minimum Wages
  • Unions and Collective Bargaining Agreements
  • The Fissured Workplace
  • Summary

• Wealth and Income Inequality:

  • Trends in US Wealth Inequality
  • Drivers of US Wealth Inequality
  • Racial Wealth Gaps
  • Income Inequality
  • Summary

• Consequences and Cures:

  • Consequences for Individuals
  • Consequences for Society
  • Potential Cures
  • Summary

Readership: Researchers, graduates, undergraduate students in courses on the economics of inequality; general reader.
Key Features:

• This book provides the reader with a course addressing inequality with a basic understanding of the facts largely through the presentation of data in charts that show the evolution of inequality over time
• Provides an understanding of the causes and consequences of rising inequality by explaining research findings in the literature even to non-economists. The book gives a glimpse of why these changes in inequality have occurred and what might be done about them
• This book opens up a discussion on the need for public policy on the consequences of inequality and inequality drivers for individuals and society rather than arguing that reducing inequality is fair or just. Some of the factors leading to increased inequality have significant economic benefits and it is very difficult to wade through philosophical arguments about conflicts between reduced inequality and efficiency or individual freedom. Rising inequality reflects economic changes that have large, long-lasting negative effects on the economic welfare of some workers, their families and their communities. And inequality itself has adverse political and economic consequences for society as a whole. The reader can decide whether these adverse consequences are serious enough to warrant policy intervention
• A large number of policy proposals have been offered in the economics literature and political debate. The author's review of possible cures for rising inequality tries to set this discussion in the context of the limited support for such policies from public beliefs and the polarized policy environment in Washington
• The author's own data were used to analyze and illustrate key concepts in the book to help explain complex relationships. For example, a table shows the extent to which the occupational structure of the US economy continued to "hollow out" — with job gains in higher-paid and lower-paid occupations and losses in the middle — after 2000. Scatter plots show the relationship between state-level import sensitivity and wage inequality and the effect of state minimum wages on inequality