22 foundational papers and books on income inequality, each with a plain and a technical summary. Citation counts are shown only where we verified them ourselves — see how we verify. Bibliography last verified 2026-07-20. Download BibTeX · RIS
22 of 22 works
| Authors | Venue | Themes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic Growth and Income Inequalitycontested | Simon Kuznets | 1955 | American Economic Review | Foundational Theory | ~8,300 ✓ verified |
| A Rational Theory of the Size of Governmentcontested | Allan H. Meltzer & Scott F. Richard | 1981 | Journal of Political Economy | Foundational Theory · Political Science: Power & Democracy | ~5,566 ✓ verified |
| Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors | Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy | 1992 | Quarterly Journal of Economics | Wage Inequality & Labor Economics | not verified |
| Distributive Politics and Economic Growthcontested | Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik | 1994 | Quarterly Journal of Economics | Inequality, Growth & Political Economy | not verified |
| Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?contested | Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini | 1994 | American Economic Review | Inequality, Growth & Political Economy | not verified |
| Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998 | Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez | 2003 | Quarterly Journal of Economics | Measuring Inequality | ~3,471 ✓ verified |
| The Race between Education and Technology | Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz | 2008 | Harvard University Press | Wage Inequality & Labor Economics | ~1,483 ✓ verified |
| Trends in U.S. Wage Inequality: Revising the Revisionists | David H. Autor et al. | 2008 | Review of Economics and Statistics | Wage Inequality & Labor Economics | not verified |
| Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age | Larry M. Bartels | 2008 | Princeton University Press (rev. ed. 2016) | Political Science: Power & Democracy | not verified |
| The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Bettercontested | Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett | 2009 | Allen Lane (UK) / Bloomsbury Press | Inequality & Social Outcomes | not verified |
| Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class | Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson | 2010 | Simon & Schuster | Political Science: Power & Democracy | not verified |
| Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States | Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson | 2010 | Politics & Society | Political Science: Power & Democracy | not verified |
| Top Incomes in the Long Run of History | Anthony B. Atkinson et al. | 2011 | Journal of Economic Literature | Measuring Inequality | not verified |
| The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future | Joseph E. Stiglitz | 2012 | W. W. Norton & Company | Political Science: Power & Democracy · Institutions & Long-Run Prosperity | not verified |
| Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty | Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson | 2012 | Crown Business | Institutions & Long-Run Prosperity | not verified |
| Capital in the Twenty-First Centurycontested | Thomas Piketty | 2014 | Harvard University Press (English trans. Arthur Goldhammer; French orig. 2013) | Wealth Inequality · Measuring Inequality | not verified |
| Skills, Education, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality among the ‘Other 99 Percent’ | David H. Autor | 2014 | Science | Wage Inequality & Labor Economics | ~1,100 ✓ verified |
| Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizenscontested | Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page | 2014 | Perspectives on Politics | Political Science: Power & Democracy | not verified |
| Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States | Raj Chetty et al. | 2014 | Quarterly Journal of Economics | Opportunity & Mobility | not verified |
| Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization | Branko Milanović | 2016 | Belknap Press of Harvard University Press | Global Inequality | not verified |
| The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940 | Raj Chetty et al. | 2017 | Science | Opportunity & Mobility | not verified |
| Measuring Income Inequality Across Countries and Over Time: The Standardized World Income Inequality Database | Frederick Solt | 2020 | Social Science Quarterly | Measuring Inequality | not verified |