Books About How Inequality Is Created and Passed On

In The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee visits places that closed public swimming pools rather than integrate them. The closures give her a way to ask who loses when decisions are organized around denying a benefit to somebody else. Start here for an account of how a racial divide can make shared services harder for everyone to keep.

Matthew Desmond follows families and landlords in Milwaukee to see what happens before and after an eviction. Being forced to move can change where a family lives, works, and goes to school, leaving fewer ways to withstand the next loss. Choose it for a detailed account of how one missed payment can start a series of changes.

Richard Rothstein traces US residential segregation through decisions made by governments, including restrictions that governed access to federally backed mortgages. Those decisions affected who could buy a home in particular neighborhoods and build wealth through it. Read it to see how formal rules gave segregation effects that could last after the rules changed.

Lauren A. Rivera studies how elite firms hire graduates. Her account of interviewers looking for someone they could imagine working with shows how cultural familiarity can matter alongside credentials. Choose it to look closely at an ordinary hiring judgment and the advantage it can give to someone who already resembles the people doing the hiring.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor studies efforts to expand access to US homeownership in the late 1960s and 1970s. Her account follows the housing program’s dependence on private businesses, which could make a sale profitable without making it sustainable for the buyer. Read it for the difference between admission to a market and getting a deal on equal terms.

In The Triumph of Injustice, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman reconstruct who paid different kinds of taxes in the United States. Bringing payroll, sales, and income taxes into view changes the comparison among households at different income levels. Choose it for the choices involved in measuring how much a tax system actually asks of different people.

Branko Milanović separates differences in income within countries from differences between them. The distinction makes a familiar claim about globalization more precise, because gains and losses can look different depending on where a person lives and which income group you compare. Choose it for a way to read distribution across borders without treating everyone in one country as a single case.

In The Class Ceiling, Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison ask why people from different class backgrounds can earn different amounts after entering the same elite occupations in Britain. Family financial help can make it easier to wait for opportunities or absorb early uncertainty. Read it alongside a book about hiring to see what keeps advantages going after an offer has been made.

Dorothy A. Brown looks at how US tax rules about marriage and homeownership interact with racial differences in earnings and wealth. Similar life choices can have different financial consequences because the rules meet households with different resources. Read it for a concrete way to examine who benefits from a policy that makes no explicit reference to race.

Annette Lareau follows children and parents as they deal with institutions such as schools. Watching who feels entitled to negotiate with an adult in authority helps show how day-to-day experience can become a resource for a child. Choose it for close observation of how social class shapes access inside ordinary encounters.

Virginia Eubanks examines systems that assess applications for public services. Her case on Indiana’s benefits administration follows what can happen to a person’s application when the office changes how it handles documents and decisions. Read it for a concrete example of how an administrative system can change who receives assistance.

In The Fissured Workplace, David Weil examines what happens when a company keeps control of a brand but moves work to contractors and subcontractors. Who signs a paycheck can be different from who has the power to set the terms. Choose it to follow pay and responsibility through more than one firm in the same business.

Alexandra Natapoff examines the American misdemeanor system and the burdens that can follow from an accusation. Fines, the cost of missing work, and pressure to settle a case give a person with few resources different choices. Read it for an account of how routine cases can leave marks that reach beyond the courtroom.

Michelle Alexander follows the expansion of drug-law enforcement and mass incarceration, then considers what a criminal record can do after someone has served a sentence. The book asks how restrictions on jobs and other opportunities can extend the effects of enforcement. Choose it for an argument about inequality that follows a policy beyond the moment it is first applied.

Daniel Markovits argues that expensive education and elite work have come to reinforce one another. A family with access to intensive training can help a child qualify for the jobs that make the next generation’s training possible. Read it for a particular argument about how competition can preserve advantage even when selection looks open.

Lisa Servon works at a check casher and talks with people using services outside banks. The visits make it possible to ask what a worker values about knowing the fee or receiving cash at a predictable time. Choose it if you want to examine a household financial choice through the alternatives that were actually available.

Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider use records kept by US households to show how earnings and obligations can change from one month to the next. An annual total does not tell you whether money arrived in time for rent. Read it for a way to think about inequality that pays attention to timing as well as income.

Daryl Collins and her coauthors follow household financial records in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa. The diaries show people using several ways to hold, borrow, and move small sums when earnings arrive unevenly. Read it to see what a household must do to make a low and irregular income cover costs that do not wait.

Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo use field experiments and detailed cases to test explanations for poverty. Examples from schooling ask which barriers matter after a place in a school is available. Choose it if you want to see the kinds of evidence that can distinguish between explanations that sound equally plausible.

Joseph E. Stiglitz argues that inequality is shaped in part by how governments set the terms on which companies compete. Market power matters to his argument because it can change who is able to claim the gains from a transaction. Choose it for a broad economic account of advantages that depend on rules.

Richard V. Reeves asks how the American upper middle class passes advantages to its children. College admissions preferences and residential zoning offer two examples of opportunities made easier to reserve for people who already have resources. Read it when you want to look at the decisions a comfortable household makes inside rules that households have helped shape.