Skip to Navigation

Reports and Working Papers: Social Inequality

Choose one of the subcategories below to view only reports dealing with that specific area.

EducationFamilies and Neighborhoods
Health InequalityLiterature Reviews
Norms and InstitutionsPolitical Inequality
Tax PolicyWork

Income Inequality and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States

Deirdre Bloome
Working Paper; 2013

Is there a relationship between family income inequality and income mobility across generations in the United States? As family income inequality rose in the U.S., parental resources available for improving children’s health, education, and care diverged. The amount and rate of divergence also varied across U.S. states. Researchers and policy analysts have expressed concern that relatively high inequality might be accompanied by relatively low mobility, tightening the connection between individuals’ incomes during childhood and adulthood.

Changing the Subhect: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City

Ruth Milkman; Stephanie Luce; Penelope Lewis
2013

The Occupy phenomenon riveted the media and the public for the next two months, until November 15, when the New York Police Department (NYPD) forcibly evicted the inhabitants of Zuccotti Park, one in a wave of such evictions in cities across the country. OWS fragmented in the wake of the evictions, but has since reappeared in new arenas. It is still too early to assess its long-term impact, but at this writing, more than a year after the evictions, Occupy’s impact on political discourse and on participants themselves remains palpable. Where did OWS come from? Who were the protesters?

Educational Aspirations, Expectations, and Realities for Middle-Income Families

Frank F. Furstenberg; Shelley Pacholok; Laura Napolitano
Journal of Family Issues; 2013

Although most Americans agree that postsecondary education is the clearest path to later financial security, many families have trouble saving money to help their children in this process. This article focuses on the struggles of middle-income families as they attempt to negotiate their daily financial realities with their aspirations for their children’s postsecondary education. In particular, the article examines the discord between the high educational aspirations these middle-income families have for their children and their daily financial constraints.

Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans

Benjamin Page; Larry M. Bartels; Jason Seawright
Perspectives on Politics; 2013

It is important to know what wealthy Americans seek from politics and how (if at all) their policy preferences differ from those of other citizens. There can be little doubt that the wealthy exert more political influence than the less affluent do. If they tend to get their way in some areas of public policy, and if they have policy preferences that differ significantly from those of most Americans, the results could be troubling for democratic policy making.

Racial Fluidity and Inequality in the United States

Aliya Saperstein; Andrew Penner
American Journal of Sociology; 2012

The authors link the literature on racial fluidity and inequality in the United States and offer new evidence of the reciprocal relationship between the two processes. Using two decades of longitudinal data from a national survey, they demonstrate that not only does an individual’s race change over time, it changes in response to myriad changes in social position, and the patterns are similar for both self-identification and classification by others.