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.