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1 - Hurdles to Shared Prosperity: Congress, Parties, and the National Policy Process in an Era of Inequality

from I - Political Arenas and Actors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2021

Jacob S. Hacker
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
Paul Pierson
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Kathleen Thelen
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Summary

Since the 1980s, income concentration has increased dramatically, with the top 1 percent increasing their share from 10.7 percent in 1980 to 20.2 percent in 2014 (an 89 percent increase), and the top 0.01 percent income share increasing even more – by approximately 230 percent.1 Before the turn of the twenty-first century, scholars seeking to explain rising inequality emphasized structural economic change and demographics, focusing on factors such as deindustrialization, globalization, aging, union decline, and skill-biased technological change (Alderson and Nielsen 2002; Berman et al. 1998; Bound and Johnson 1992; Danziger and Gottschalk 1995; Goldin and Katz 2008).

Type
Chapter
Information
The American Political Economy
Politics, Markets, and Power
, pp. 51 - 75
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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