Global inequality : a new approach for the age of globalization
(Book)
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Location | Call Number | Status |
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Indian Prairie Public Library District - 1st Floor | 330.9 MILANOVIC | On Shelf |
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Choice Review
Milanovic (Graduate Center, CUNY), a leading scholar with an indefatigable passion for the study of inequality, plumbs the research on the topic and makes it accessible to anyone interested in such deep questions as these: Why is inequality soaring? Will the poor ever catch up with the rich? Will inequality self-destruct? Will the 1 percent gobble everything up? Is capitalism rigged to benefit the rich? Answers are pivotal in the study of the evolution of the human condition. The author's main organizing construct is the Kuznets curve of economics, which connects income inequality and the per capita income of countries. If the Kuznets curve is the product of a causal connection between the two, then inequality should decline as a country becomes richer: recent data suggests otherwise. Could there be a dynamic evolution, a wave of Kuznets curves, at play? How else can one reconcile the rise and fall of within-country inequality and the convergence of per capita incomes across broad country categories? This engaging read, much in the style of Anthony Atkinson's Inequality (CH, Sep'15, 53-0340), patiently takes readers forward through a century of data, organizing it all with the lenses of modern economics. The author ends on a hopeful note, even if the future he describes is not. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --Joydeep Bhattacharya, Iowa State University
Kirkus Book Review
The rich get richer, and the world gets poorer. Inequality is a constant of history. But, writes economist Milanovic (Luxembourg Income Study Center; The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, 2010, etc.), only recently have we been able to work with meaningful numbers about it. His terminus is 1988, "a convenient starting place because it coincides almost exactly with the fall of the Berlin Wall and reintegration of the then-communist economies into the world economic system." Armed with strong data, the author charts how inequality of income and wealth, among other axes, though a global phenomenon, also has local results: in the face of globalization, workers in China may want to unionize, for instance, while workers in the United States might demand protective tariffs. Building on but not entirely endorsing the work of Thomas Piketty, Milanovic looks closely at some specific consequences of this push and pull across the globe: unskilled workers may be drawn to the U.S. because of the tightening of possibilities of intergenerational mobility, while more skilled ones might instead opt for the Northern European nations, where that opportunity is greater. If that premise is guaranteed to irritate America-firsters, so are some of Milanovic's other findings, presented with the arid calmness of his profession. As inequality rises, the middle class disappears; as it does, political power concentrates in the hands of the rich, who may opt to send their children to private schools and refuse to fund public ones, with the "countervailing power of the middle classno longer sufficiently strong to oblige them to finance public health and education and participate in it." Milanovic is cautious about forecasting either economic or political consequences, noting in passing how wrong analysts were in the 1970s and '80s about the world of today and observing, "predicting important discrete events may be a form of charlatanism." Packed with charts and graphs and not for the numerically faint of heart. For those versed in economics, however, Milanovic provides an illuminating analysis. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Citations
Milanović, B. (2016). Global inequality: a new approach for the age of globalization . The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)Milanović, Branko. 2016. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)Milanović, Branko. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.
Harvard Citation (style guide)Milanović, B. (2016). Global inequality: a new approach for the age of globalization. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)Milanović, Branko. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.