Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries
Janet C. Gornick and Markus Jantti
Abstract
This book presents original empirical research on economic inequality in affluent countries, using comparable data from two widely-recognized, high quality, data sources: the Luxembourg Income Study Database and the Luxembourg Wealth Study Database. Both of these publicly-accessible databases are housed at LIS, a cross-national data archive that is directed by the book's two Editors. The volume's seventeen empirical chapters explore change over time in income inequality; the ways in which politics affects and is affected by economic inequality; the extent to which women's work, paid and unpaid ... More
This book presents original empirical research on economic inequality in affluent countries, using comparable data from two widely-recognized, high quality, data sources: the Luxembourg Income Study Database and the Luxembourg Wealth Study Database. Both of these publicly-accessible databases are housed at LIS, a cross-national data archive that is directed by the book's two Editors. The volume's seventeen empirical chapters explore change over time in income inequality; the ways in which politics affects and is affected by economic inequality; the extent to which women's work, paid and unpaid, affects inequality; and cross-national comparisons of the distribution of various measures of household wealth. This book is exceptional in its inclusion of patterns of work within households, and politics, as sources of inequality. A key strength of the book is its emphasis on the economic position of the middle class; most studies of inequality include a secondary focus on either poverty or top incomes, leaving aside careful assessments of the middle of the income distribution. In addition to its thirteen comparative chapters, the book closes with a section that assesses inequality in four selected cases - Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa. These countries, each with a unique pattern of inequality, have rarely appeared in cross-national texts on economic inequality, largely due to the lack of comparable data.
Keywords:
income distribution,
inequality,
middle class,
households,
cross-national affluent countries,
women's work,
wealth,
public opinion,
Luxembourg Income Study,
Luxembourg Wealth Study
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780804778244 |
| Published to Stanford Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.11126/stanford/9780804778244.001.0001 |
