Author: Leslie McCall
Publication: Social Class: How Does It Work? Chapter 10, pp. 293-323
Editors: Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Date: July 2008
Chapter description:
At least some of the impetus for a new book about class is driven by the steep rise in market earnings inequality in the United States and other advanced industrial nations during the 1980s and 1990s. In the United States, this rise in earnings inequality occurred for women as well as for men. Although estimates vary somewhat depending on data sources and definitions, the level of earnings inequality is roughly the same for men and women, and the rate of increase in earnings inequality is also comparable.