The Multidimensional Politics of Economic Inequality in the U.S. and in Comparative Perspective

Leslie McCall, Associate Director, Stone Center, and Presidential Professor of Sociology and Political Science, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Abstract: In this talk, Leslie McCall will present an analytical framework for understanding popular responses to economic inequality that is multidimensional in nature. She explores multidimensionality in three main respects. First, she examines how Americans connect rather than oppose two key dimensions of inequality, inequality of economic outcomes and inequality of economic opportunities, questioning the notion that Americans care only about the latter and not about the former. Second, she examines how Americans rather accurately perceive a social structure of economic opportunity across group-based dimensions of inequality – class, race, ethnicity, and gender – contrary to the individualistic claim that Americans believe in the existence of a level playing field for all. Finally, she examines how policy preferences for reducing inequality reflect the perceived role of the government in enacting egalitarian policies, the common approach in the literature, but also the perceived role of major corporations in needing to create broadly equitable and just workplaces, contrary to the claim that Americans cling to free market principles. Using existing and original data sources, survey experiments and established correlational surveys, McCall analyzes public views in the United States over time and in a comparative context, suggesting that a multidimensional framework can shed light on the politics of inequality in other regions of the world as well.

Leslie McCall studies public opinion about inequality, opportunity, and related economic and policy issues; trends in actual earnings and family income inequality; and patterns of intersectional inequality. She is the author of The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution (2013) and Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy (2001). Her research has also been published in a wide range of journals and edited volumes and supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Demos: A Network of Ideas and Action, the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, and The Graduate Center’s Advanced Research Collaborative. She was formerly at Northwestern University, where she was a professor of sociology and political science (courtesy), as well as a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. While most of McCall’s published research to date focuses on inequality within the United States using existing survey data, her recently published and ongoing research branches out to incorporate other countries and new methodological approaches, including: studies of rising economic inequality among families and declining gender inequality using new demographic measures; media coverage of economic inequality since the 1980s using new machine learning tools; and public views about inequality, opportunity, and redistribution using survey experimental methods and new questions fielded on major international surveys. McCall also maintains an interest in the conceptualization and empirical analysis of intersectionality from a social science perspective.