Synopses & Reviews
This state-of-the-art volume presents comparative, empirical research on a topic that has long preoccupied scholars, politicians, and everyday citizens: economic inequality. While income and wealth inequality across all populations is the primary focus, the contributions to this book pay special attention to the middle class, a segment often not addressed in inequality literature.
Written by leading scholars in the field of economic inequality, all 17 chapters draw on microdata from the databases of LIS, an esteemed cross-national data center based in Luxembourg. Using LIS data to structure a comparative approach, the contributors paint a complex portrait of inequality across affluent countries at the beginning of the 21st century. The volume also trail-blazes new research into inequality in countries newly entering the LIS databases, including Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa.
Review
"A timely, informative volume for students and researchers concerned with income inequality . . . Recommended."R. S. Rycroft, CHOICE
Review
"This is one of the most important books on inequality published in the past decade. Focusing on what has happened to the middle class since the 1980s, during a period of substantial economic and political restructuring, this volume's remarkable insights and influence will span disciplines."Jason Beckfield, Harvard University
Review
"Janet C. Gornick and Markus Jäntti's Income Equality is one fruit of this massive research effort. The book consists of studies of contemporary inequality trends using the [Luxembourg Income Study] data woven into a rich tapestry of understanding of a complex historical episode. The contributorseconomists, sociologists, political scientistsanalyze the data using powerful methodologies capable of laying bare the underlying structure that human intuition cannot access . . . The combination of high-quality data comparable across countries, international coverage of a period of major change, and insightful analysis based on sophisticated methodologies makes this book a major contribution to our understanding of income. Income Inequality will influence research for years to come."François Nielsen, American Journal of Sociology
Synopsis
This volume presents cross-nationally comparative evidence on income inequality trends, women's employment and its effect on inequality, the distribution of wealth, and the interaction of politics with inequality across several mainly high-income countries.
Synopsis
The past several decades have seen dramatic changes in global poverty—the most important of which has been a shift that has seen nearly three-quarters of the world’s poor living not in the most impoverished areas of the world, but in middle income nations. This relatively rapid transformation has forced a rethinking of anti-poverty strategies, as many of the long-established frameworks for such policies no longer apply to this altered situation.
This book gathers experts in anti-poverty work to answer many of the key questions that now face development policy. With contributions covering Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and analyzing poverty and inequality on global, national, and local scales, the book provides poverty researchers and policy makers with valuable new tools for assessing and addressing poverty as it actually exists in today’s world.
About the Author
Einar Braathen is a senior researcher in international studies at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research.Julian May is director of the Institute for Social Development and chairperson of the Community Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Gemma Wright is a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford and the deputy director of the Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policy.