Edited by David B. Grusky and Jasmine Hill
Why are so many types of inequality suddenly increasing? Should we be worried that we’re moving into a “second gilded age” with unprecedented levels of income inequality? In this new collection, David B. Grusky and Jasmine Hill present readings that lay bare the main changes in the social and economic landscape, what’s driving these changes, and what might be done to reverse them. This reader delivers the latest and most influential contributions on economic inequality, social mobility, educational inequality, racial and ethnic relations, and gender inequality.
The contributions span many fields and are authored by such top scholars as Emmanuel Saez (economist, UC Berkeley), Kathryn Edin (sociologist, Johns Hopkins), Raj Chetty (economist, Stanford), Florencia Torche (sociologist, NYU), Thomas Piety (economist, EHESS), and Lucien Bebchuk (law, Harvard).
The readings are thematically organized, and each section begins with an introduction from Grusky and Hill that place the selections within a broader context. The pieces are expertly excerpted, allowing readers to quickly understand the main forces at work, the debates still in play, and what’s still unknown. The resulting collection is a pitch-perfect introduction for undergraduates or anyone interested in learning why we’re entering a new era of inequality and what can be done to change the tide.
Buy the Book
Electronic
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. David B. Grusky and Jasmine Hill
Poverty and Inequality in the 21st Century
Part I: The Classic Theory
Overview
2. Karl Marx
Classes in Capitalism and Pre-Capitalism
3. Max Weber
Class, Status, Party
4. W.E.B. Du Bois
Black Reconstruction and the Racial Wage
5. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Women and Economics
Part II: The Great Takeoff in Income and Wealth Inequality
Overview
6. Emmanuel Saez
Striking it Richer
7. Thomas Piketty
Capital in the 21st Century
8. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz
The Race Between Education and Technology
9. Robert Frank
Why is Income Inequality Growing?
10. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Winner-Take-All-Politics
11. Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld
Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality
12. Richard Freeman
(Some) Inequality is Good For You
Part III: The One Percent
Overview
13. C. Wright Mills
The Power Elite
14. Alvin W. Gouldner
The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class
15. David Brooks
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
16. Shamus Khan
Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite
Part IV: Poverty and the Underclass
Overview
The Everyday Life of the Poor
17. Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed
18. Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Joanna Miranda Reed
Low-Income Urban Fathers and the “Package Deal” of Family Life
The Extent of Poverty in the U.S.
19. Sheldon Danziger and Christopher Wimer
The War on Poverty
20. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer
Living on $2/Day
Why is There So Much Poverty?
21. Jack Shonkoff
Poverty and Child Development
22. William Julius Wilson
Being Poor, Black, and American
23. Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
24. Ann Owens and Robert Sampson
Legacies of Inequality
25. Patrick Sharkey and Felix Elwert
Multigenerational Disadvantage
26. Matthew Desmond
Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty
27. Bruce Western and Becky Pettit
Incarceration and Social Inequality
Part V: Mobility and the American Dream
Overview
The Race for Education
28. Sean F. Reardon
The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor
29. Richard Breen, Ruud Luijkx, Walter Müller, & Reinhard Pollak
Nonpersistent Inequality in Educational Attainment
30. Michael Hout
Rationing College Opportunity
31. Stephen L. Morgan
A New Social Psychological Model of Educational Attainment
32. Josipa Roska and Richard Arum
Academically Adrift
Economic and Occupation Mobility
33. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez
Economic Mobility
34. Florencia Torche
Does College Still Have Equalizing Effects?
35. Elizabeth Armstrong
Paying for the Party
36. Jay MacLeod
Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-income Neighborhood
37. Jan O. Jonsson, David B. Grusky, Matthew Di Carlo, and Reinhard Pollak
It’s a Decent Bet that our Children Will be Professors Too
Who Do You Know?
38. Mark S. Granovetter
The Strength of Weak Ties
39. Roberto M. Fernandez and Isabel Fernandez-Mateo
Networks, Race, and Hiring
Work and Mobility
40. Jacob Hacker
The Great Risk Shift
41. Jake Rosenfeld
Little Labor: How Union Decline is Changing the American Landscape
42. Ann Stevens
Jobs and Poverty
Part VI: Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality
Overview
Race as a Social Construct
43. Michael Omi and Howard Winant
Racial Formation in the United States
44. Aliya Saperstein and Andrew M. Penner
The Dynamics of Racial Fluidity and Inequality
Immigration
45. Alejandro Portes & Min Zhou
The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants
46. Tomás R. Jiménez
Why Replenishment Strengthens Racial and Ethnic Boundaries
Discrimination, Prejudice, and Stereotyping
47. Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan
Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination
48. Devah Pager
Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration
49. Claude Steele
Stereotype Threat and African-American Student Achievement
Race and Ethnicity in the 21st Century and Beyond
50. William Julius Wilson
The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions
51. Reanne Frank, Ilana Redstone Akresh, and Bo Lu
How Do Latino Immigrants Fit into the Racial Order?
52. Mary Patillo
Black Picket Fences
53. Jennifer Lee
Tiger Kids and the Success Frame
Part VII: Gender, Sexuality, and Inequality
Overview
Gender and Sexuality as a Social Construct
54. Judith Lorber
The Social Construction of Gender
55. C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges
Fag Discourse in a Post-Homophobic Era
The Division of Labor
56. Arlie Russell Hochschild
The Time Bind
57. Christine Percheski
Opting Out?
58. Asaf Levanon and David B. Grusky
Egalitarianism and Gender Inequality
How Much Discrimination is There?
59. Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse
Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians
60. Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, & In Paik
Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?
How Gender Intersects
61. Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins
Why Race, Class, and Gender Matter
62. Andras Tilcsik
Do Openly Gay Men Experience Employment Discrimination?
A Stalling Out?
63. Paula England
The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled
64. Cecilia Ridgeway
The Persistence of Gender Inequality
Part VIII: How Inequality Spills Over
Overview
65. Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff
Income Inequality and Income Segregation
66. Michael Hout and Daniel Laurison
The Realignment of U.S. Presidential Voting
67. Annette Lareau
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
68. Karen Lutfey and Jeremy Freese
The Fundamentals of Fundamental Causality
Part IX: Moving Toward Equality?
Overview
69. James J. Heckman
Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children
70. Carol Dweck
Why Late Investments Can Work
71. Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel
Flexicurity
72. Harry Holzer
Reducing Poverty the Pragmatic Way
73. Lucien Bebchuk and Jesse M. Fried
Tackling the Managerial Power Problem
74. Michelle Jackson
We Need to Have a Second Conversation
About the Editors
Index