Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Economic Inequalities and Interactions with Race and Gender

(Social Equity and Race)

Five years after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s widely hailed Capital in the Twenty First Century, the challenge of economic inequality has become salient both in policy circles and among the general public. But we remain uncertain regarding many of the particulars about how to properly characterize and address this challenge in the United States.

While income inequality in the economy overall has been on the rise, with a growing share of income held by the top few percent of earners, income differences between men and women and between racial groups have diminished or stayed the same over the past several decades. By contrast, wealth inequality has largely grown nationwide and between races and genders.

Improvement towards equality in any of these areas will require understanding how inequalities in all three can reinforce or counteract each other. How has economic inequality interacted with gender and racial differences over time, and what can be done about it? Who is at a disadvantage and to what degree? Do women hold fewer assets than their male counterparts? Could universal programs aimed at improving the economic positions of all Americans and reducing overall economic inequality have spill-over effects for historically dis-advantaged groups? Developing innovative programs to successfully reduce inequality across these domains requires engaging with the evidence on how they are interlinked.