The Undeserving Rich

Leslie McCall is Professor of Sociology and Political Science, as well as Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, at Northwestern University. She is the author of Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy (2001). Her work on economic inequality has been published in the American Sociological Review, Demography, Signs, the Annual Review of Sociology, Perspectives on Politics, Economic Geography and the Socio-Economic Review, as well as in several edited volumes.

'In this carefully constructed study, McCall leverages public opinion survey data to challenge the traditional narrative concerning American attitudes about economic inequality … Summing up: recommended.' S. E. Horn, Choice

• Introduction: thinking about income inequality; 1. Beyond the opposition between opportunity and inequality: theories of American beliefs about inequality from the nineteenth century to the present; 2. The emergence of a new social issue: media coverage of economic inequality and social class in the United States, 1980–2010; 3. American beliefs about income inequality: what, when, who, and why; 4. Why do Americans care about income inequality? The role of opportunity; 5. Americans' social policy preferences in the era of rising inequality; Conclusion: a new era of beliefs about inequality.