Causes and Consequences of Increasing Inequality

Despite the economic boom of the 1990s, the gap between the wealthy and the poor in the United States is growing larger. This volume draws together a panel of scholars who address the issue in terms comprehensible to non-economists. Their findings are surprising, suggesting that factors such as trade imbalances, immigration rates and differences in educational resources do not account for recent increases in the inequality of wealth and earnings. Rather, the contributors maintain that these discrepancies can be attributed to workplace demend for high-skilled labour. They also insist that further research must examine the organization of industry in order to better understand the concurrent devaluation of manual labour.