No abstract

The increase in economic disparities over the past 30 years has prompted extensive research on the causes and consequences of inequality both in the United States and, more recently, globally. This review provides an update of research on the patterns and causes of economic inequality in the United States, including inequality of earnings, wealth, and opportunity. We also explore the social and political consequences of inequality, particularly in the areas of health, education, crime, social capital, and political power. Finally, we spotlight an emerging literature on world inequality, which examines inequality trends within as well as across nations. Sociologists can advance research on inequality by bringing discipline-based expertise to bear on the organization and political economy of firms and labor markets, the pathways through which inequality has an effect, and the social, political, and cultural contingencies that might modify this effect.

A growing body of research highlights that in utero conditions are consequential for individual outcomes throughout the life cycle, but research assessing causal processes is scarce. This article examines the effect of one such condition-prenatal maternal stress-on birth weight, an early outcome shown to affect cognitive, educational, and socioeconomic attainment later in life. Exploiting a major earthquake as a source of acute stress and using a difference-in-difference methodology, I find that maternal exposure to stress results in a significant decline in birth weight and an increase in the proportion of low birth weight. This effect is focused on the first trimester of gestation, and it is mediated by reduced gestational age rather than by factors affecting the intrauterine growth of term infants. The findings highlight the relevance of understanding the early emergence of unequal outcomes and of investing in maternal well-being since the onset of pregnancy.

This article reviews the sociological and economic literature on intergenerational mobility. Findings on social class, occupational status, earnings, and income mobility are discussed and discrepancies among them are evaluated. The review also examines nonlinearities in the intergenerational association, variation in mobility across advanced industrial countries, and recent mobility trends in the United States. The literature suggests an association between inequality and economic mobility at the country level, with the United States featuring higher inequality and lower mobility than other advanced industrial countries. However, mobility has not declined in the United States over the recent decades in which inequality has expanded. The inequality-mobility relationship fails to emerge when occupational measures of mobility are used, likely because these measures do not fully capture some mechanisms of economic reproduction.

A major finding in comparative mobility research is the high similarity across countries and the lack of association between mobility and other national attributes, with one exception: higher inequality seems to be associated with lower mobility. Evidence for the mobility-inequality link is, however, inconclusive, largely because most mobility studies have been conducted in advanced countries with relatively similar levels of inequality. This article introduces Chile to the comparative project. As the 10th most unequal country in the world, Chile is an adjudicative case. If high inequality results in lower mobility, Chile should be significantly more rigid than its industrialized peers. This hypothesis is disproved by the analysis. Despite vast economic inequality, Chile is as fluid, if not more so, than the much more equal industrialized nations. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a decline in mobility as the result of the increase in inequality during the market-oriented transformation of the country in the 1970s and 1980s. Study of the specific mobility flows in Chile indicates a significant barrier to long-range downward mobility from the elite (signaling high “elite closure”), but very low barriers across nonelite classes. This particular mobility regime is explained by the pattern, not the level, of Chilean inequality-high concentration in the top income decile, but significantly less inequality across the rest of the class structure. The high Chilean mobility is, however, largely inconsequential, because it takes place among classes that share similar positions in the social hierarchy of resources and rewards. The article concludes by redefining the link between inequality and mobility.