Presented by the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, The Inequality Podcast brings together scholars across disciplines to discuss the causes and consequences of inequality and strategies to promote economic mobility. This podcast is hosted by economists Steven Durlauf and Damon Jones, psychologist Ariel Kalil, and sociologist Geoff Wodtke.
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Many undergraduates study the economy in depth only once: in an introductory survey course. But a traditional “Econ 101" syllabus can omit vital topics, including inequality and climate change. These subjects are often left for later courses, which most students will never take. Wendy Carlin is a professor of economics at University College London, where she co-directs the UCL Stone Center. She oversees CORE Econ, a project that aims to refocus the undergraduate economics curriculum on “the most...
Some 300 years after his birth, Adam Smith remains a towering figure in economic thought — and one whose ideas are often oversimplified. While Smith is rightly remembered as a champion of free markets, he also wrote extensively about those left behind by unfettered capitalism, articulating a moral philosophy not nearly as well known as “the invisible hand.” Eric Schliesser is a professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam. His book, Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public ...
In every corner of the world, right-wing and even centrist policymakers voice a similar argument: that raising taxes will lead high earners to flee. In the United States, fear of tax flight looms large in blue states, where lawmakers worry local millionaires will decamp for tax havens like Florida and Texas. But research shows that even in states like Illinois, New York and California, millionaires tend to stay put. Why? Cristobal Young, a sociologist at Cornell and the author of The Myth of Mil...
Few policy areas generate the level of charged debate that education policy does. For parents and teachers alike, issues such as school choice, standardized testing, and discipline have persisted as political lightning rods. In such a contentious environment, finding evidence-based solutions is essential to improving both decision-making and educational outcomes. Caterina Calsamiglia is an ICREA Research Professor and the group leader of the Computational Social Science and Humanities unit at th...
Whatever a country’s level of income inequality, its level of wealth inequality is even worse. In fact, in many countries there is no correlation between the level of income inequality and wealth inequality. So if differences in income aren’t the main factor driving wealth inequality, what is? Fabian Pfeffer is a professor of sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich where he holds the Chair for Social Inequality and Social Structures. He is the founding director of the Munich ...
In traditional economic models, individuals have one overriding motivation: utility. While this utility-maximizing paradigm has its advantages, it risks overlooking other forces that shape individual decision-making. One such force is group identity. Whereas a utility-maximizing model emphasizes what one wants, an identity-based model might emphasize what one believes they should want — because of who they are. Rachel Kranton is the James B. Duke Professor of Economics at Duke University, where ...
The most complete measures of inequality consider the full life-course of an individual, from childhood to adulthood, and from adulthood to old age. One determinant of life outcomes is education, particularly whether one has obtained a college degree. Research has shown clear benefits of earning a diploma. But many qualified young people do not pursue one. Why? Today on the show, we present two conversations that address this question. First, host Steven Durlauf is joined by Salvador Navarro, pr...
Some of the most heated debates in American life center on how much intergenerational inequality is influenced by historical context. Inequality, of course, doesn’t come out of nowhere—history always exerts some influence—but to what extent are today’s ills attributable to those of the past? The challenge for scholars is to pinpoint the exact mechanisms through which decades- or centuries-old forces persist. The past may not be dead—so how does it live on, empirically? Deirdre Bloome, Professor ...
Decades after the end of Jim Crow, residential segregation remains a major factor in American life. The historical causes of this are well-known; less so are the ongoing forces that maintain segregation, despite progress made in other areas. For example, why do so many more high-income Black households live in low-income neighborhoods when compared to their affluent white counterparts? What drives this and other forms of 21st-century segregation? Dionissi Aliprantis is a Research Fellow at the C...
Traditional economic models often rely on tidy assumptions: rational agents, stable equilibria, linear relationships and so on. But those models can struggle to capture the messy reality of actual systems. Societies are constantly evolving. Assumptions can shift. And isolating the variables that underlie such changes can be daunting. Scott Page is the John Seely Brown Distinguished University Professor of Complexity, Social Science, and Management at the University of Michigan. He joins host Ste...
The United States doesn’t have enough affordable housing. It has also failed to adequately address the climate crisis. These statements may not appear connected in any obvious way, but addressing one crisis inevitably leads to questions about the other. How do we build millions of new homes without leaving a massive carbon footprint? Perhaps one answer is to retrofit. But if cities fund eco-friendly renovations in working-class neighborhoods, what’s to stop “green gentrification”? Daniel Aldana ...
Economists are often accused of practicing a “dismal science,” a discipline defined by the sober measurement of humanity’s limits: scarcity, zero-sum propositions, and inequality. But the old stereotype overlooks a more hopeful side of the science, one in which economists resemble moral philosophers. Peter Boettke is among the foremost scholars of this latter brand of economics. He teaches at George Mason University, where he is the Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philos...
For tens of millions of Americans, working life is characterized by uncertainty and limited recourse. Hours can be plentiful one week and fleeting the next, and often unpredictable, with shifts arranged on short notice, at odd hours, or canceled just as erratically. The prevalence of at-will employment amplifies this insecurity, as the threat of job loss—a potentially devastating blow to both workers and their dependents—is ever-present. Often powerless against corporate practices that prioritiz...
Sixty years ago, equal pay laws, the women’s movement, and widespread access to contraception ushered in a new era, transforming the lives of American women. In the years since, women’s place in higher education, the labor market, and wider society has dramatically expanded. American women live with the legacy of that progress yet remain hemmed in by its limits. Today, we present two conversations that examine the past and present of gender inequality in America. First, we are joined by economic...
In this episode, Lauren Rivera critically examines the myth of meritocracy, arguing that the system is not merely flawed in measurement but fundamentally biased by subjective definitions of merit controlled by dominant groups. Drawing from her book "Pedigree" and studies on elite hiring and early education, she reveals how socioeconomic status, gender, and perceived disability significantly impact opportunities. The discussion explores historical shifts in merit definition, systemic discrimination, and potential policy levers to foster a genuinely equitable society.
Thousands of years before the modern era, great thinkers were theorizing about economic inequality. Unequal conditions were a focus of both Plato and Jesus, just as it was for later thinkers like Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx. David Lay Williams is a professor of political science at DePaul University. His new book, “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx,” traces some 2,500 years of intellectual history about inequality, drawing surprising n...
As this podcast has highlighted before, cross-disciplinary collaboration can enrich practically any investigation into the nature of inequality. It is hard to find more compelling evidence of this than recent breakthroughs in the study of wealth inequality. Today on the show, we speak to two experts who have made fundamental contributions to this literature, in part by drawing on physics, math, and even Renaissance-era history. Our first guest is Alberto Bisin. Alberto is a professor of economic...
College athletics has tumbled into an unpredictable era. Money paid to players for their name, image and likeness has shaken long-held assumptions about what it means to be a college athlete. But although NIL deals have kicked off a new era in college sports, the tensions and conflicts involved are nothing new — nor are they unique to college athletics. Today on the show, we present a conversation that places the debate around paying college athletes into a broader context, drawing on the work o...
One of the most pernicious drivers of inequality in the United States over the past half century has been mass incarceration. Moreover, the consequences of mass incarceration have been borne not just by those held in prisons, but by their families and communities as well. First, Harvard sociologist Christopher Muller traces the historical roots of mass incarceration. He illuminates the close association between incarceration rates and the demand for labor, a relationship that has persisted from ...
Inequality is rarely static. It can grow or shrink over time. Perhaps no one understands that dynamic better than economist Bhash Mazumder, whose work has been foundational in understanding and measuring intergenerational mobility. In this conversation with host Steven Durlauf, Bhash recounts how his research revealed a clearer picture of income mobility in the United States: namely, how previous estimates of mobility were far too rosy. Throughout their discussion, measurement issues abound. The...
Conversations about inequality tend to center on macro-level forces, such as political, economic, and social systems. But today on the show, we present two conversations that examine factors that unfold on a smaller scale: inside people’s everyday domains. In our first segment, host Steven Durlauf interviews fellow host Ariel Kalil, a developmental psychologist at the University of Chicago, about her work on family structure and the ways it can influence inequality. They drill down on the roles ...
Neighborhoods and schools—through factors like socioeconomic composition, access to resources, racial segregation, and social networks—contribute to patterns of inequality and influence mobility. Today’s guests provide cross-disciplinary insights into how these environments shape opportunities and outcomes. First, host Steven Durlauf speaks with the University of Wisconsin’s Felix Elwert, UC Berkeley’s David Harding, and the Stone Center’s own Geoffrey Wodtke on their research, which investigate...
On this episode of The Inequality Podcast, host Steven Durlauf is joined by Janet Gornick, director of the Stone Center of Socio-Economic Inequality at The City University of New York and one of the world’s foremost experts on the measurement of socio-economic inequality. They discuss her many contributions to improving the quantity and quality of inequality data available to researchers, including her time as director of LIS, the organization formerly known as the Luxembourg Income Study. The i...
In the first episode of the new academic year, Steven sits down with Miles Corak to discuss cross-country comparisons of inequality and intergenerational mobility. They discuss the Great Gatsby Curve, the mechanisms behind the intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status, and related innovations in economic research and policy in the U.S. and Canada. Read Miles’ blog post about the Gatsby curve here ....
Since the 1970s, two-parent households have declined, while single-parent households have become more commonplace in the United States. This shift has occurred due to various factors, ranging from changes in labor markets, mass incarceration, and changing social norms surrounding marriage and parental responsibilities. In her book “The Two-Parent Privilege,” Melissa Kearny explores how this shift in family structure is related to childhood outcomes. Kearney argues that resources and stability af...
The 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC struck down race-based college admissions. It reignited debates about affirmative action as a tool for addressing inequality and historical injustice. In an interview recorded live at the Harris School of Public Policy in November, Stone Center Director Steven Durlauf and Brown University economist Glenn Loury discuss their different perspectives on affirmative action. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Interim Dean of the ...
Steven talks to Guido Alfani, professor of economic history at Bocconi University, about the history of wealth inequality in western civilization. They discuss how the roles and perceptions of the rich have changed over time, touching on important moments in Western civilization, such as the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, and the modern era. Dr. Alfani also offers his thoughts on how things like religion, culture, war, disease, and government policies alleviate (or help...
Conrad Miller, Associate Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy at the University of California-Berkley’s Haas School of Business, joins Steven to discuss discrimination and affirmative action. The conversation digs into the methodology and surprising conclusions from four of Dr. Miller’s papers: one that explores federal affirmative action policies in hiring, another that examines how racial composition of a workforce changes absent federal intervention, a third that examines the role of sta...
Steven talks to Xi Song, associate professor of Sociology and Demography at the University of Pennsylvania, about trends in intergenerational mobility across time and space. Dr. Song details how intergenerational mobility declined in the United States after World War II but then dives further to explore the diversity of experiences for different groups. She discusses the trends in mobility as broken down by race, immigration status, and gender. Steven and Dr. Song even outline the different ways...
Steven and Geoff are joined by Michael Esposito, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, in a discussion about racial health disparities that continue to plague the United States. They explore how things like redlining, law enforcement practices, and unequal access to medical care contribute to racial gaps in both health outcomes and even mortality rates. Dr. Esposito also offers his thoughts on how budget priorities could be adjusted to address a wider definition of “pu...
