Social scientists use 3 common methods to define class—by occupation, income, or education—and there is really no consensus about the “right” way to do it. Michael Zweig, a leading scholar in ...

This analysis shows the policy approaches most likely to reduce inequities in wealth by race, as opposed to exacerbating existing inequities. The dramatic increase in wealth inequality over the past ...

How past racial injustices are carried forward as wealth handed down across generations and reinforced by “color-blind” practices and policies Issues of racial inequity are increasingly at the ...

Campaign finance laws protect our democracy from corruption and preserve the integrity of our elections. These rules governing the use of money in politics were in a sorry state before Citizens United ...

The freedom to vote is America’s most important political right outside of the original Bill of Rights, and it is also the most hard-won right. In the early years of our republic, only white ...

The City of Detroit’s bankruptcy was driven by a severe decline in revenues (and, importantly, not an increase in obligations to fund pensions). Depopulation and long-term unemployment caused ...

Today, the typical young person aspiring to go to college in the United States faces a higher education system that is fundamentally different from what previous generations enjoyed. For generations, ...

With more than 15 million workers in the sector, and leverage over workplace standards across the supply chain, retail wields enormous influence on Americans’ standard of living and the nation’s ...

Over the last ten years, a growing number of cities and states passed laws limiting the use of credit checks in hiring, promotion, and firing. Lawmakers are motivated by a number of well-founded ...

Evaluating a spectrum of states for their voter removal practices related to an important but often overlooked voting barrier: voter purges. Purges played a part in more than 19 million voters being ...

In 2016, President Obama declared a state of emergency over the contamination of the water system in Flint, Michigan, a poor, majority-black city.1 The crisis was seen as a failure of the government ...

For decades, GDP has enjoyed supreme status as the predominant benchmark of our economic and social progress. In reality, GDP obscures or ignores essential aspects of Americans’ economic and social ...