- Income Inequality

Catalog description

The substantive goal of this course is to facilitate an understanding of changes in the distribution of income in the United States, from 1945 to the present. The first part of the course studies the measurement and context of American income inequality. We will end the first section of the course with an analysis of economic mobility in the US. The second section of the course will look at a variety of explanations for increasing income inequality. We will examine how the key themes of technical change, de-industrialization, immigration and globalization shaped the American economy over the last several decades. The primary focus of the first two sections will be upon income inequalities arising from changes in the ideological, demographic, macroeconomic and institutional context. In addition, we will investigate the impact of these trends on the middle class and different segments of the labor force. Finally, we will discuss why inequality might matter and how the trends discussed in the course could shape America’s future and discuss whether and what policy changes might be needed.