The Princeton Working Group on Inequality

The basic tension between market and democratic institutions resides in the unequal distribution of market power in contrast to the formal equality of democratic citizens. Although democracy guarantees to all the rights to vote and organize, it seems that the cause of equality is best served best when market power flows to the economically disadvantaged. Broad trends in politics and economics in the industrialized democracies follow this pattern. Sustained prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s raised the incomes of working class households, creating political opportunity. The expansion of the welfare state, particularly in Western Europe, detached the fate of the poor from their price in the market. By some accounts, the institution of citizenship itself was significantly redrawn. Membership in the new welfare states of the postwar period conferred not just political rights of participation but also social rights to a level of welfare respecting human dignity.

The rapid rise in inequality in the United States since the 1970s suggests that the intimate connection between economic inequality and the quality of citizenship can also develop in a different direction. If the economically disadvantaged are marginalized from civic participation, the polity may shrink and the formal equality of democratic citizens would be eroded. If the public sphere contracts to include only the affluent, the political voice for economic redistribution is muffled and economic inequality becomes self-sustaining.

The Princeton Working Group on Inequality is guided by this broad hypothesis describing the effects of economic inequality on the quality of civic life and the subsequent effect of citizenship on economic distribution. The working group consists of six projects. Larry Bartels looks at the links between economic inequality, the Presidency, and policies pursued in the Congress. Howard Rosenthal is investigating the relationship between long-term patterns of economic inequality and polarization in Congressional voting behavior. Paul DiMaggio examines how Internet usage and literacy is shaped by patterns of economic disadvantage, public policy, and the structure of the new media industry. Bruce Western is studying how changes in economic inequality are reflected in growth of the U.S. penal system. Nolan McCarty’s project focuses on the links between state-level income inequality and redistributive public policy. Finally, Leslie McCall’s research investigates how public opinion about economic inequality has been affected by the growing gap between rich and poor.

The Working Group has also developed a database using census and survey data to measure income inequality in the 50 states from 1963 and 2002.