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Overview
America Unequal demonstrates how powerful economic forces have diminished the prospects of millions of Americans and why "a rising tide no longer lifts all boats." Changes in the economy, public policies, and family structure have contributed to slow growth in family incomes and rising economic inequality. Poverty remains high because of an erosion of employment opportunities for less-skilled workers, not because of an erosion of the work ethic; because of a failure of government to do more for the poor and the middle class, not because of social programs.
There is nothing about a market economy, the authors say, that ensures that a rising standard of living will reduce inequality. If a new technology, such as computerization, leads firms to hire more managers and fewer typists, then the wages of lower-paid secretaries will decline and the wages of more affluent managers will increase. Such technological changes as well as other economic changes, particularly the globalization of markets, have had precisely this effect on the distribution of income in the United States.
America Unequal challenges the view, emphasized in the Republicans' "Contract with America," that restraining government social spending and cutting welfare should be our top domestic priorities. Instead, it proposes a set of policies that would reduce poverty by supplementing the earnings of low-wage workers and increasing the employment prospects of the jobless. Such demand-side policies, Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk argue, are essential for correcting a labor market that has been increasingly unable to absorb less-skilled and less-experienced workers.
Editorials
Borderlines [UK]
The book is of considerable use to American Studies practitioners. It is written for the lay person. It is clear, precise and assumes no prior knowledge of economics...For those of us who seek to understand modern America, the importance of a book like this, written in accessible English and with all terms explained so that we can interpret the data, is in providing a useful anchor or corrective to reliance only on factors rooted in abstracted media images. And, in an age of swinging cutbacks and demoralisation in higher education, the book offers us a look at a society where education really is the key to success.
— Stephen Burwood
Industrial and Labor Relations Review
This book contains much of value for those who have only a passing knowledge of recent distribution changes and are seeking to learn more. Because the authors' presentation of the basic distributional statistics is accessible to those unfamiliar with the field, the book could be very useful in an undergraduate class focused on distributional issues...America Unequal is well written and concise, and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to begin learning about the subject.
— McKinley Blackburn
Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare
America Unequal is not only about social inequality, but about poverty, employment, economic growth and government social policy. The book is a rich brew of information and ideas about the complex interactions between these different phenomena. Indeed, it offers an incisive analysis of social conditions in contemporary America...This is an important book. It makes a major contribution to unraveling the factors that contribute to heightened inequality and poverty in the United States. It is meticulously researched and should serve as an invaluable resource for policy makers.
Nation
America Unequal shows that even within the circumscribed meaning of conservative politics, while 'everyone' gained from growth in the postwar decades, only a few have gained over the past twenty years...[Danziger and Gottschalk's] argument...[is] clear and persuasive.
— Jacob Kramer
Transition
[An] admirably brief and clearly argued book...[and] a valuable distillation and summary of the last fifteen years of economic research on poverty.
— Nicholas Lemann
Virginia Quarterly Review
An incredibly useful book...In jargon-free prose...[Danziger and Gottschalk] review the competing theories which social scientists have used to account for the unpleasant economic news of the 1980s and 1990s—a time when the United States economy has prospered even as poverty and economic inequality have increased...Taking into account what is politically and practically possible, the authors talk sensibly about government policies to alleviate the situation.