Kenworthy Lane - Inequality And Sociology

American Behavioral Scientist
http://abs.sagepub.com Inequality and Sociology
Lane Kenworthy American Behavioral Scientist 2007; 50; 584 DOI: 10.1177/0002764206295008 The online version of this article can be found at: http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/5/584

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Inequality and Sociology
Lane Kenworthy
University of Arizona, Tucson

American Behavioral Scientist Volume 50 Number 5 January 2007 584-602 © 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/0002764206295008 http://abs.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Sociologists have contributed relatively little to our understandingof rising inequality of earnings and income in the United States. The author considers both why that has been the case and the degree to which it matters. Suggestions are offered about how a comparative perspective can help to shed some light on developments in the United States. Keywords: income inequality; social class; stratification; pretax-pretransfer income

S

tratification is amongthe core areas in sociology. One of the more important developments in stratification in the past generation has been the increase in inequality of earnings and income in the United States. Yet as Martina Morris and Bruce Western (1999) and John Myles (2003) have noted, sociologists have not contributed much to the description and explanation of this development. Why not? Does it matter? I take astab at answering these two questions here. I then offer a few suggestions about ways in which a comparative approach might help us to better understand rising inequality in the United States.

Why Did American Sociologists Miss the Boat?
Although I offer relatively little in the way of documentation to support my conjectures, my sense is that there are four principal reasons why Americansociologists have played so little role in the discussion and analysis of rising earnings and income inequality.

From “How Much Inequality?” to “What Determines Individual Attainment?”
Part of the story has to do with the shift in focus among stratification researchers from the structure (or degree) of inequality to the allocation of individuals to positions within that structure. Put another way, inthe 1970s and 1980s, there was a gradual but significant move from investigating how much inequality there is (and why) to examining “determinants of attainment.”
Author’s Note: Parts of this article draw from my publications Egalitarian Capitalism (Russell Sage, 2004) and Jobs with Equality (Russell Sage, in press). 584
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Kenworthy / Inequality and Sociology 585

Two developments are illustrative. The first concerns two of the most influential books on inequality written by sociologists: Inequality and Who Gets Ahead? by Christopher Jencks and colleagues (1972 and 1979, respectively). Inequality attemped to answer the question: How much would the degree of inequality be reduced if various factors(such as parents’ socioeconomic status, cognitive ability, and so on) were equalized? Who Gets Ahead put the question differently: What explains the variation in individual earnings and occupational status? The second has to do with the evolution of mobility studies. Beginning with P. Blau and Duncan’s (1967) The American Occupational Structure, “status attainment” researchers and other sociologists...