All articles tagged with "Inequality"
A thorough guide to the welfare state — its Bismarckian origins, Esping-Andersen's three worlds typology, the Beveridge Report, Nordic universalism, the US welfare state's fragmented character, the economics of social insurance, evidence on poverty reduction, and the political economy of retrenchment.
Globalization delivered the fastest poverty reduction in history and generated the political backlash reshaping the world. Here is the economics, political economy, and historical arc of economic globalization.
Globalization delivered the fastest poverty reduction in history and generated the political backlash reshaping the world. Here is the economics, political economy, and historical arc of economic globalization.
Housing costs have outrun incomes for decades. The cause is not mysterious: zoning restrictions, NIMBYism, and political economy that systematically blocks new supply. Here is what the research shows.
How taxes work explained: progressive income taxes, capital gains, corporate tax incidence, wealth taxes, the Laffer curve, and why billionaires often pay lower rates than workers.
Women rate male job candidates more favorably than identical female candidates. Working-class voters oppose redistribution more strongly than the wealthy. Minority group members show implicit preferences for majority groups. System justification theory explains a pattern that confounds standard social psychology: people actively rationalize, defend, and legitimize the social arrangements that disadvantage them — because the alternative, believing the system is arbitrary or unjust, is psychologically more threatening.
Thomas Piketty's r>g thesis, Robert Merton's Matthew effect, Raj Chetty's mobility data, and the Gini coefficient's trajectory explain why wealth concentrates. The mechanics of inequality are neither accidental nor mysterious — they follow from structural features of capital, networks, and inherited advantage that compound over time.
Why does inequality grow? Understand Piketty's r > g thesis, the mechanisms of wealth concentration, what the research shows about inequality's causes, and what policies can address it.
The United States has lower social mobility than most rich democracies. This is a detailed account of what the research shows: how mobility is measured, why it varies across places, what blocks it, and what actually helps.
A comprehensive examination of chattel slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, Reconstruction's failure, and the measurable economic, health, and political legacy that persists today.
Race is one of the most consequential categories in human societies, yet its biological basis is contested and its definitions vary across cultures and history. Understand how race is constructed, what genetics shows, and why the concept persists.
What is capitalism? From Adam Smith and Marx to Piketty and Varieties of Capitalism — a thorough exploration of how capitalism emerged, how it works, and where it fails.
How do poverty traps work? Explore the cognitive bandwidth research, S-curve growth models, microfinance evidence, the graduation approach, and conditional cash transfers.
Global wealth and income inequality is measurably rising. Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Raj Chetty, and others explain the structural forces driving the gap — and what research says about reversing it.
Climate justice examines who causes climate change, who suffers from it, and what is owed across nations and generations. A guide to the philosophy, policy, and politics of climate inequality.
Social class shapes life chances, identity, and behavior in ways most people never consciously examine. Explore Marx, Weber, Bourdieu, the Great British Class Survey, and what research reveals about class, mobility, and psychology.
Globalization delivered the fastest poverty reduction in history and generated the political backlash reshaping the world. Here is the economics, political economy, and historical arc of economic globalization.
The Matthew Effect describes how early advantages compound over time. Learn Merton's sociology concept, cumulative advantage in academia and tech, and the counterforces.
Labor economics studies how wages are determined, why workers get paid what they do, and how labor markets function. Explore human capital theory, the gender pay gap, minimum wage research, union decline, and the effects of automation.