Income Inequality in Capitalist Democracies: The Interplay of Values and Institutions

Examines patterns of income inequality among 16 advanced democracies from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s and explains why some societies have a large and growing divide between the rich and the poor while others, facing similar global economic pressures, maintain more egalitarian income distributions.

Vicki L. Birchfield is Associate Professor and Director of the European Union Center of Excellence at The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology.