168 - Plenary Session. The Impact of Inequality

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Abstract

Families and individuals in the middle and bottom ranges of the income ladder suffer widening inequality in a number of ways. As the ladder elongates, they're likely to feel relatively more deprived. They're more likely to marry or partner with others in the lower ranges of income, thereby compounding their relative disadvantages. Upward mobility is harder to achieve, because the same degree of effort gets them a shorter distance up the ladder. They're likely to experience more geographic segregation by income -- resulting in lower-quality public services, inadequate access to public transportation and jobs, and fewer models of successful upward mobility around them. 

At the other end of the ladder, widening inequality tends to insulate wealthier individuals and families from the poverty and economic insecurity others in society are experiencing. To an ever larger extent, being "rich" means not having to come across anyone who is not. The advantages of wealth are compounded through marriage, and investment in children. Wealthy tend to know that they and their children and grandchildren will do fine. As a result, they are incapable of doing the Rawlsian experiment; they cannot imagine what the rules of society should be under a "veil of ignorance" about where they'd end up in the pecking order. The result is the breakdown of a society -- to the extent that by "society" we mean a system in which members feel some duties to one another. 

Sub Unit

• Plenary and Presidential Panels

Session Organizer

• Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania

Presider

• Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania

Panelist

• Robert B. Reich, University of California-Berkeley