By now, no one is debating the fact that economic inequality has grown substantially in the past few decades. It seems that almost every day there’s a new report showing that incomes and wealth continue to grow for the richest while everyone else struggles to make do.
But when it comes to solutions, the conversation stalls.
That may be because people are focusing on the wrong parts of of inequality, says Kevin Leicht, the head of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign’s sociology department. In a paper recently published in The Sociological Quarterly, Leicht writes that the conversation about inequality in America revolves too much around disparities between groups—say, the earnings gap between white and black workers—and not enough on the disparities within them. He argues that most conversations about inequality distract from finding practical solutions, and suggest a misleading narrative about how to get ahead in America.