Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth
- ISBN-10
- 0691221502
- ISBN-13
- 9780691221502
- Category
- Social Science
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-11-10
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Authors
- Ann Swidler, Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout
Description
As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America. They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of the incendiary bestseller The Bell Curve (1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality. Inequality by Design offers a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society. More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s. Not only does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth, that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures, and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market--an excuse that leads to resignation and passivity--Inequality by Design shows how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality
By Wayne AuUnequal By Design critically examines high-stakes standardized testing in order to illuminate what is really at stake for students, teachers, and communities negatively affected by such testing.
-
Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities
By Jessica TrounstineSegregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation.
-
Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need
By Sasha Costanza-ChockThis book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened ...
-
Fuzzy Control Systems Design and Analysis: A Linear Matrix Inequality Approach
By Kazuo Tanaka, Hua O. WangA comprehensive treatment of model-based fuzzy control systems This volume offers full coverage of the systematic framework for the stability and design of nonlinear fuzzy control systems.
-
What Works
By Iris BohnetBehavioral design offers a new solution. Iris Bohnet shows that by de-biasing organizations instead of individuals, we can make smart changes that have big impacts—often at low cost and high speed.
-
Advances in Linear Matrix Inequality Methods in Control
By Silviu-Iulian Niculescu, Laurent El GhaouiThis book provides an up-to-date account of the LMI method and covers topics such as recent LMI algorithms, analysis and synthesis issues, nonconvex problems, and applications.
-
Failure by Design: The Story behind America's Broken Economy
By Josh BivensAmong current EPI research staff, Kathryn Edwards, Kai Filion, Elise Gould, Andrew Green, Larry Mishel, and Heidi Shierholz all produced charts, provided data, or reviewed numbers for the book. Ross Eisenbrey, Jody Franklin, John Irons, ...
-
Confronting Inequality: How Societies Can Choose Inclusive Growth
By Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, Andrew BergIn this book, three International Monetary Fund economists show that this increase in inequality has in fact been a political choice—and explain what policies we should choose instead to achieve a more inclusive economy.
-
Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit
By Charles W. Calomiris, Stephen H. HaberPatterson, Edward Lloyd Stewart. 1917. Banking Principles and Practice. ... “Lost Opportunities for Compromise in the Bank War: A Reassessment of Jackson's Veto Message.” Business History Review 61: 531–50. ———. 1994.
-
Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity
By Laura J. Lawson, Diane Jones Allen, David de la PenaDesign as Democracy is written to reinvigorate democratic design, providing inspiration, techniques, and case stories for a wide range of contexts.