Inequality and opportunity: the return of a neglected debate

Stephen Machin and John van Reenen

CEP US Election Analysis Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: During this election period many Americans are feeling angry towards the very rich, especially those working in the financial sector, who helped cause the Great Recession and yet were bailed out by the government. Increases in inequality might be tolerable at a time of growing consumption for all, but they become less acceptable when the unemployment rate has hit 10% and real wages continue to stagnate. The chances that those who are born poor will escape from poverty are lower now in the US than in almost any other OECD country. However, neither of the presidential candidates is clear about how they would tackle the fundamental causes of the enormous shift in the US income distribution.

Keywords: inequality; social mobility; fiscal crisis; US Election; USA; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepusa004.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inequality and opportunity: the return of a neglected debate (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepusa:004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP US Election Analysis Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().