Coming apart? Lives of the rich and poor over time in the United States

Income inequality in the United States has increased consistently since the 1980s, but has this growing economic gap led to larger cultural distance between the rich and poor? On September 28, 2017, Co-Chair of J-PAL's Labor Markets sector Marianne Bertrand discussed how the lives and attitudes of the rich and poor have diverged from the 1960s to the 2010s, using results from a machine learning algorithm.

Marianne Bertrand is the Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Her research focuses on racial bias and inequality in the US and India. Marianne serves as co-chair of J-PAL’s Labor Sector, co-editor of the American Economic Review, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Learn more about Marianne Bertrand.

Learn more about the Data. Decisions. Public Policy. lecture series.