Inequality and Economic Growth: Examining Stiglitz's Perspectives

This essay, drawing on Joseph Stiglitz's work, critically examines the relationship between economic inequality and economic growth. It challenges the 'rising tide' and 'trickle-down' theories, arguing that excessive inequality hinders economic performance. The essay presents data on rising income and wealth inequality, particularly in the US and other developed nations, and highlights the concentration of wealth at the top, while the majority of the population experiences stagnation or decline. It explores alternative explanations for inequality, such as rent-seeking and political factors. Furthermore, it analyzes the negative effects of inequality on opportunities, particularly in the US, and its impact on various ethnic groups. The essay concludes by advocating for policies that promote both equity and economic well-being, emphasizing that inequality is not beneficial for economic growth.

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INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
Joseph Stiglitz
Introduction
In the middle of the twentieth century, it came to be believed that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’:
economic growth would bring increasing wealth and higher living standards to all sections of
society. At the time, there was some evidence behind that claim. In industrialized countries in the
1950s and 60s every group was advancing, and those with lower incomes were rising most
rapidly.
In the ensuing economic and political debate, this ‘rising tide hypothesis’ evolved into a much
more specific idea, according to which regressive economic policies – policies that favour the
richer classes – would end up benefiting everyone. Resources given to the rich would inevitably
‘trickle down’ to the rest. It is important to clarify that this version of old-fashioned ‘trickle-
down economics’ did not follow from the post-war evidence. The ‘rising-tide hypothesis’ was
equally consistent with a ‘trickle-up’ theory – give more money to those at the bottom and
everyone will benefit; or with a ‘build-out from the middle’ theory – help those at the centre, and
both those above and below will benefit.
Today the trend to greater equality of incomes, which characterised the post-war period, has been
reversed. Inequality is now rising rapidly. Contrary to the rising-tide hypothesis, the rising tide
has only lifted the large yachts, and many of the smaller boats have been left dashed on the
rocks. This is partly because the extraordinary growth in top incomes has been going along with
an economic slowdown.
The trickle-down notion – along with its theoretical justification, marginal productivity theory –
needs urgent rethinking. That theory attempts both to explain inequality – why it occurs – and to
justify it – why it would be beneficial for the economy as a whole. This chapter looks critically at
both claims. It argues in favor of alternative explanations of inequality, with particular reference
to the theory of rent-seeking and to the influence of institutional and political factors, which have
shaped labour markets and patterns of remuneration. And it shows that, far from being either
necessary or good for economic growth, excessive inequality tends to lead to weaker economic
performance. In light of this, it argues for a range of policies that would increase both equity and
economic wellbeing.
The great rise of inequality
Let us start by examining the ongoing trends in income and wealth. In the last three decades,
those at the top have done very well, especially in the US. Between 1980 and 2013, the richest
1% have seen their average real income increase by 142% (from $461,910, adjusted for inflation,

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to $1,119,315) and their share of national income double, from 10% to 20%. The top 0.1% have
fared even better. Over the same period, their average real income increased by 236% (from
$1,571,590, adjusted for inflation, to $5,279,695) and their share of national income almost
tripled, from 3.4 to 9.5%.1
Over the same 33 years, median household income grew by only 9%. And this growth actually
occurred only in the very first years of the period: between 1989 and 2013 it shrank by 0.9%. 2
But even this underestimates the extent to which those at the bottom have suffered – their
incomes have only done as well as they have because hours worked have increased. Between
1979 and 2007, workers in the bottom fifth of the wage distribution increased their average
annual work hours by 22 percent – a greater increase than for any other quintile. 3 Median wages
(adjusted for inflation) increased by only 5 percent from 1979 to 2012, even though at the same
time productivity grew by 74.5 percent (Figure 1). 4 And these statistics underestimate the true
deterioration in workers’ wages, for education levels have increased (the percentage of
Americans who are college graduates has nearly doubled since 1980, to 30 percent), 5 so that one
should have expected a significant increase in wage rates. In fact, average real hourly wages for
all Americans with only a high school diploma or a bachelor’s degree have decreased in the last
three decades. 6 7
In the first three years of the so-called recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-2009 – in
other words, since the U.S. economy returned to growth – fully 91% of the gains in income went
gone to the top 1%.8 Presidents Bush and Obama both tried a trickle-down strategy—giving
large amounts of money to the banks and the bankers. The idea was simple: by saving the banks
and bankers, all would benefit. The banks would restart lending. The wealthy would create more
jobs. This strategy, it was argued, would be far more efficacious than helping homeowners,
businesses, or workers directly. The US Treasury typically demands that when money is given
to developing countries, conditions be imposed on them, to ensure not only that the money is
used well, but that the country adopts economic policies that (according to Treasury’s economic
theories) will lead to growth. But no conditions were imposed on the banks – not even, for
example, requirements that they lend more or stop abusive practices. The rescue worked in
enriching those at the top; but the benefits did not trickle down to the rest of the economy.
The Federal Reserve, too, tried trickle-down economics. One of the main channels by which
quantitative easing was supposed to rekindle growth was by leading to higher stock market
prices, which would generate higher wealth for the very rich, who would then spend some of
that, which in turn would benefit the rest.
As Yeva Nersisyan and Randall Wray argue in their chapter in this volume, both the Fed and the
Administration could have tried policies that more directly benefited the rest of the economy:
helping homeowners, lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, and fixing the broken
credit channel. These trickle-down policies were relatively ineffective – one reason that seven
years after the US slipped into recession, the economy was still not back to health.

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Figure 1 – Wages, productivity and average incomes in the US (1975‐2013)
Sources: ‘The State of Working America, 12th ed.’by the Economic Policy Institute (left panel); T.Piketty and E.Saez (right panel)
Wealth is even more concentrated than income. The wealthiest 1% of Americans hold 35% of
the country’s wealth, and even more when housing wealth is not counted. Just one example of
the extremes of wealth in America is the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire
command a wealth of $145 billion, which is equivalent to the net worth of 1,782,020 average
American families.9
Wealth inequality too is on the upswing. For the quarter of a century before the Great Recession,
the rich were getting wealthier at a more rapid pace than everyone else. When the crisis hit, it
depleted some of the richest Americans’ wealth because stock prices declined, but many
Americans also had their wealth almost entirely wiped out as their homes lost value. After the
crisis, the wealthiest 1 percent of households had 225 times the wealth of the typical American,
almost double the ratio 30 or 50 years ago. In the years of ‘recovery’, as stock market values
rebounded (in part as a result of the Fed’s lopsided efforts to resuscitate the economy through
increasing the balance sheet of the rich), the rich have regained much of the wealth that they had
lost; the same did not happen to the rest of the country.10
Inequality plays out along ethnic lines in ways that should be disturbing for a country that had
begun to see itself as having won out against racism. Between 2005 and 2009, a huge number of
Americans saw their wealth drastically decrease. The net worth of the typical white American
household was down substantially, to $113,149 in 2009, a 16 percent loss of wealth from 2005.
But the situation is much worse for other groups. The typical African American household lost
53 percent of its wealth—putting its assets at a mere 5 percent of the median white American’s.
The typical Hispanic household lost 66 percent of its wealth.11
Probably the most invidious aspect of America’s inequality is that of opportunities: in the US a
young person’s life prospects depend heavily on the income and education of his parents, even
more than in other advanced countries12. The “American dream” is largely a myth.
80
90
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180
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Productivity
Median hourly
wage
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380
430
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Bottom 99% average income
Top 1% average income

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A number of studies have noted the link between inequality of outcomes and inequality of
opportunities.13 When there are large inequalities of income, those at the top can buy for their
offspring privileges not available to others, and they often come to believe that it is their right
and obligation to do so. And, of course, without equality of opportunity those born in the bottom
of the distribution are likely to end up there: inequalities of outcomes perpetuate themselves.
This is deeply troubling: given our low level of equality of opportunity and our high level of
inequality of income and wealth, it is possible that the future will be even worse, with still
further increases in inequality of outcome and still further decreases in equality of opportunity.
A generalized international trend
While America has been winning the race to be the most unequal country (at least within
developed economies), much of what has just been described for America has also been going on
elsewhere. In the last 25 years the Gini index – the widely used measure of income inequality –
has increased by roughly 22% in Germany, 13% in Canada, 13% in UK, 8% in Italy and 6.4% in
Japan (Fig. 3). 14 The more countries follow the American economic model, the more the results
seem to be consistent with what has occurred in the United States. The UK has now achieved the
second highest level of inequality among the countries of Western Europe and North America, a
marked change from its position before the Thatcher era (Figs. 2 and 3). Germany, which had
been among the most equal countries within the OECD, now ranks in the middle.
The enlargement of the share of income appropriated by the richest 1% has also been a general
trend, and in Anglo-Saxon countries it started earlier and it has been more marked than anywhere
else (Fig.2). In rich countries, such as the US, the concentration of wealth is even more
pronounced than that of income, and has been rising too. For instance, in the UK the income
share of the top 1% went up from 5.7% in 1978 to 14.7% in 2010, while the share of wealth
owned by the top 1% surged from 22.6% in 1970 to 28% in 2010 and the top 10% wealth share
increased from 64.1% to 70.5% over the same period.
Figure 2 – Income share of the richest 1% in some major industrialized countries
Source: World Top Incomes Database (available at http://topincomes.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/)
Also disturbing are the patterns that have emerged in transition economies, which at the
beginning of their movement to a market economy had low levels of inequality in income and
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
UK Canada
Australia USA 0%
5%
10%
15%
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Italy Germany
France Japan

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wealth (at least according to available measurements). Today, China’s inequality of income, as
measured by its Gini coefficient, is roughly comparable to that of the United States and Russia. 15
Across the OECD, since 1985 the Gini coefficient has increased in 17 of 22 countries for which
data is available, often dramatically (Figure 3).16
Figure 3 – Gini coefficient of income inequality in OECD countries (after‐tax and transf
Note: income refers to disposable income adjusted for household size.
Source: OECD, ‘Divided We Stand: why inequality keeps rising’, 2011
Moreover, recent research by Piketty and his co-authors has found that the importance of
inherited wealth has increased in recent decades, at least in the rich countries for which we have
data. After displaying a decreasing trend in the first post-war period, the share of inheritance
flows in disposable income has been increasing in the last decades.17
Explaining inequality
How can we explain these worrying trends? Traditionally, there has been little consensus among
economists and social thinkers on what causes inequality. In the nineteenth century, they strived
to explain and either justify or criticize the evident high levels of disparity. Marx talked about
exploitation. Nassau Senior, the first holder of the first chair in economics, the Drummond
Professorship at All Souls College, Oxford, talked about the returns to capital as a payment for
capitalists’ abstinence, for their not consuming. 18 It was not exploitation of labour, but the just
rewards for their forgoing consumption. Neoclassical economists developed the marginal
productivity theory, which argued that compensation more broadly reflected different
individual’s contributions to society.
0.10
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0.35
0.40
0.45
0.50
0.55
2008 (or latest date available)
Mid‐1980s

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While exploitation suggests that those at the top get what they get by taking away from those at
the bottom, marginal productivity theory suggests that those at the top only get what they add.
The advocates of this view have gone further: they have suggested that in a competitive market
exploitation (e.g. as a result of monopoly power or discrimination) simply couldn’t persist, and
that additions to capital would cause wages to increase, so workers would be better off thanks to
the savings and innovation of those at the top.
More specifically, marginal productivity theory maintains that, due to competition, everyone
participating in the production process earns a remuneration equal to her or his marginal
productivity. This theory associates higher incomes with a greater contribution to society. This
can justify, for instance, preferential tax treatment for the rich: by taxing high incomes we would
deprive them of the ‘just deserts’ for their contribution to society, and, even more importantly,
we would discourage them from expressing their talent. 19 Moreover, the more they contribute—
the harder they work and the more they save—the better it is for workers, whose wages will rise
as a result.
The reason that these ideas justifying inequality have endured is that they have a grain of truth in
them. Some of those who have made large amounts of money have contributed greatly to our
society, and in some cases what they have appropriated for themselves is but a fraction of what
they have contributed to society. But this is only a part of the story: there are other possible
causes of inequality. Disparity can result from exploitation, discrimination and exercise of
monopoly power. Moreover, in general, inequality is heavily influenced by many institutional
and political factors – industrial relations, labor market institutions, welfare and tax systems, for
example – which can both work independently of productivity and affect productivity.
That the distribution of income cannot be explained just by standard economic theory is
suggested by the fact that the before-tax and transfer distribution of income differs markedly
across countries. France and Norway are examples of OECD countries that have managed by and
large to resist the trend of increasing inequality (Figures 2 and 3). The Scandinavian countries
have a much higher level of equality of opportunity, regardless of how that is assessed. Marginal
productivity theory is meant to have universal application. Neoclassical theory taught that one
could explain economic outcomes without reference, for instance, to institutions. It held that a
society’s institutions are simply a façade; economic behaviour is driven by the underlying laws
of demand and supply, and the economist’s job is to understand these underlying forces. Thus,
the standard theory cannot explain how countries with similar technology, productivity and per
capita income can differ so much in their before-tax distribution.
The evidence, though, is that institutions do matter. Not only can the effect of institutions be
analysed, but institutions can themselves often be explained, sometimes by history, sometimes
by power relations, and sometimes by economic forces (like information asymmetries) left out of
the standard analysis. 20 Thus, a major thrust of modern economics is to understand the role of
institutions in creating and shaping markets. The question then is: What is the relative role and
importance of these alternative hypotheses? There is no easy way of providing a neat quantitative
answer, but recent events and studies have lent persuasive weight to theories putting greater
weight on rent-seeking and exploitation. We shall discuss this evidence in the next section,

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before turning to the institutional and political factors which are at the root of the recent
structural changes in income distribution.
Rent-seeking and top incomes
The term ‘rent’ was originally used to describe the returns to land, since the owner of the land
receives these payments by virtue of his ownership and not because of anything he does. The
term was then extended to include monopoly profits (or monopoly rents) – the income that one
receives simply from control of a monopoly – and in general returns due to similar ownership
claims. Thus, rent-seeking means getting an income not as a reward for creating wealth but by
grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would have been produced anyway. Indeed, rent-
seekers typically destroy wealth, as a byproduct of their taking away from others. A monopolist
who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the
same time destroys value. To get his monopoly price, he has to restrict production.
Growth in top incomes in the last three decades has been driven mainly in two occupational
categories: those in the financial sector (both executives and professionals) and non-financial
executives.21 Evidence suggests that rents have contributed on a large scale to the strong increase
in the incomes of both.
Let us first consider executives in general. That the rise in their compensation has not reflected
productivity is indicated by the lack of correlation between managerial pay and firm
performance. Already in 1990 Jensen and Murphy, by studying a sample of 2,505 CEOs in 1,400
companies, found that annual changes in executive compensation did not reflect changes in
corporate performance. 22 Since then, the work of Bebchuk, Fried and Grinstein has shown that
the huge increase in US executive compensation since 1993 cannot be explained by firm
performance or industrial structure and that, instead, it has mainly resulted from flaws in
corporate governance, which enabled managers in practice to set their own pay.23 Mishel and
Sabadish examined 350 firms, showing that growth in the compensation of their CEOs largely
outpaced the increase in their stock market value. Most strikingly, executive compensation
displayed substantial positive growth even during periods when stock market values decreased.24
There are other reasons to doubt standard marginal productivity theory. In the United States the
ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker increased from around 20 to 1 in 1965 to 300 to 1
in 2013. There was no change in technology that could explain a change in relative productivity
of that magnitude—and no explanation for why that change in technology would occur in the US
and not in other similar countries. Moreover, the design of corporate compensation schemes has
made it evident that they are not intended to reward effort: typically, they are related to the
performance of the stock, which rises and falls depending on many factors outside the control of
the CEO, such as market interest rates and the price of oil. It would have been easy to design an
incentive structure with less risk, simply by basing compensation on relative performance,
relative to a group of comparable companies. 25 The struggles of the Clinton Administration to
introduce tax systems encouraging so-called performance pay (without imposing conditions to
ensure that pay was actually related to performance) and disclosure requirements (which would
have enabled market participants to better assess the extent of stock dilution associated with
CEO stock option plans) clarified the battle lines: those pushing for favourable tax treatment and

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against disclosure understood well that these arrangements would have facilitated greater
inequalities in income.26
For specifically the rise in top incomes in the financial sector, the evidence is even more
unfavorable to explanations based on marginal productivity theory. An empirical study by
Philippon and Reshef shows that in the last two decades workers in the financial industry have
enjoyed a huge ‘pay-premium’ with respect to similar sectors, which cannot be explained by the
usual proxies for productivity (like the level of education or unobserved ability). According to
their estimates, financial sector compensations have been about 40% higher than the level that
would have been expected under perfect competition.27
It is also well documented that banks deemed ‘too big to fail’ enjoy a rent due to an implicit state
guarantee. Investors know that these large financial institutions can count, in effect, on a
government guarantee, and thus they are willing to provide them funds at lower interest rates.
The big banks can thus prosper not because they are more efficient or provide better service but
because they are in effect subsidised by taxpayers. 28 It is not surprising that the rents enjoyed in
this way by big banks translated into higher incomes for their managers and shareholders.
In the financial sector even more than in other industries, executive compensation in the
aftermath of the crisis provided convincing evidence against marginal productivity theory as an
explanation of wages at the top: the bankers who had brought their firms and the global economy
to the brink of ruin continued to receive high rates of pay—compensation which in no way could
be related either to their social contribution or even their contribution to the firms for which they
worked (both of which were negative). For instance, a study that focused on Bear Sterns and
Lehman Brothers in 2000-2008 has found that the top executive managers of these two giants
have brought home huge amounts of ‘performance-based’ compensations (estimated at around
$1 billion for Lehman and $1.4 billion for Bear Stearns), which were not clawed back when the
two firms collapsed.29
Still another piece of evidence supporting the importance of rent-seeking in explaining the
increase in inequality is provided by those studies which have showed that increases in taxes at
the very top do not result in decreases in growth rates. If these incomes were a result of their
efforts, we might have expected those at the top to respond by working less hard, with adverse
effects on GDP.30
The increase in rents31
Three striking aspects of the evolution of most rich countries in the last 35 years are (a) the
increase in the wealth to income ratio; (b) the stagnation of median wages; and (c) the failure of
the return to capital to decline. Standard neoclassical theories, in which ‘wealth’ is equated with
‘capital’, would suggest that the increase in capital should be associated with a decline in the
return to capital and an increase in wages. The failure of wages of unskilled workers to increase
has been attributed by some (especially in the 1990s) to skill-biased technological change, which
increased the premium put by the market on skills. Hence, those with skills would see their
wages rise, and those without skills would see them fall. But recent years have seen a decline in

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the wages paid even to skilled workers. Moreover, as my recent research shows, 32 average wages
should have increased, even if some wages fell. Something else must be going on.
There is an alternative—and more plausible—explanation. It is based on the observation that
rents are increasing (due to the increase in land rents, intellectual property rents and monopoly
power). As a result, the value of those assets that are able to provide rents to their owners—like
land, houses and some financial claims—is rising proportionately. So overall wealth increases,
but this does not lead to an increase in the productive capacity of the economy or in the mean
marginal productivity or average wage of workers. On the contrary, wages may stagnate or even
decrease, because the rise in the share of rents has happened at the expense of wages.
The assets which are driving the increase in overall wealth, in fact, are not produced capital
goods. In many cases, they are not even ‘productive’ in the usual sense; they are not directly
related to the production of goods and services. 33 With more wealth put into these assets, there
may be less invested in real productive capital. In the case of many countries where we have data
(like France) there is evidence that this is indeed the case: a disproportionate part of savings in
recent years has gone into the purchase of housing, which has not increased the productivity of
the ‘real’ economy.
Monetary policies that lead to low interest rates can increase the value of these ‘unproductive’
fixed assets—an increase in the value of wealth that is unaccompanied by any increase in the
flow of goods and services. By the same token, a bubble can lead to an increase in wealth—for
an extended period of time—again with possible adverse effects on the stock of ‘real’ productive
capital. Indeed, it is easy for capitalist economies to generate such bubbles (a fact that should be
obvious from the historical record, 34 but which has also been confirmed in theoretical models. 35)
While in recent years there has been a ‘correction’ in the housing bubble (and in the underlying
price of land), we cannot be confident that there has been a full correction. The increase in the
wealth-income ratio may still have more to do with an increase in the value of rents than with an
increase in the amount of productive capital. Those that have access to financial markets and can
get credit from banks (typically those already well off) can purchase these assets, using them as
collateral. As the bubble takes off, so does their wealth and society’s inequality. Again, policies
amplify the resulting inequality: favorable tax treatment of capital gains enables especially high
after-tax returns on these assets and increases the wealth especially of the wealthy, who
disproportionately own such assets (and understandably so, since they are better able to
withstand the associated risks).
The role of institutions and politics
The large influence of rent-seeking in the rise of top incomes undermines the marginal
productivity theory of income distribution. The income and wealth of those at the top comes at
least partly at the expense of others—just the opposite conclusion from that which emerges from
trickle-down economics. When, for instance, a monopoly succeeds in raising the price of the
goods which it sells, it lowers the real income of everyone else. This suggests that institutional
and political factors play an important role in influencing the relative shares of capital and labor.

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As we noted earlier, in the last three decades wages have grown much less than productivity
(Fig.1)—a fact which is hard to reconcile with marginal productivity theory 36 but is consistent
with increased exploitation. This suggests that the weakening of workers’ bargaining power has
been a major factor. Weak unions and asymmetric globalisation, where capital is free to move
while labour is much less so, are thus likely to have contributed significantly to the great surge of
inequality.
The way globalisation has been managed has led to lower wages in part because workers’
bargaining power has been eviscerated. With capital highly mobile—and with tariffs low—firms
can simply tell workers that if they don’t accept lower wages and worse working conditions, the
company will move elsewhere. To see how asymmetric globalisation can affect bargaining
power, imagine, for a moment, what the world would be like if there was free mobility of labour,
but no mobility of capital. Countries would compete to attract workers. They would promise
good schools and a good environment, as well as low taxes on workers. This could be financed
by high taxes on capital. But that’s not the world we live in.
In most industrialized countries there has been a decline in union membership and influence; this
decline has been especially strong in the Anglo-Saxon world. This has created an imbalance of
economic power and a political vacuum. Without the protection afforded by a union, workers
have fared even more poorly than they would have otherwise. The inability of unions to protect
workers against the threat of job loss by the moving of jobs abroad has contributed to weakening
the power of unions. But politics has also played a major role, exemplified in President Reagan’s
breaking of the air traffic controllers’ strike in the US in 1981 or Margaret Thatcher’s battle
against the National Union of Mineworkers in the UK.
Central bank policies focusing on inflation have almost certainly been a further factor
contributing to the growing inequality and the weakening of workers’ bargaining power. As soon
as wages start to increase, and especially if they increase faster than the rate of inflation, central
banks focusing on inflation raise interest rates. The result is a higher average level of
unemployment and a downward ratcheting effect on wages: as the economy goes into recession,
real wages often fall; and then monetary policy is designed to ensure that they don’t recover.
Inequalities are affected not just by the legal and formal institutional arrangements (such as the
strength of unions) but also by social custom, including whether it is viewed as acceptable to
engage in discrimination.
At the same time Governments have been lax in enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Contrary to
the suggestion of free-market economists, but consistent with even casual observation of how
markets actually behave, discrimination has been a persistent aspect of market economies, and
helps explain much of what has gone on at the bottom. The discrimination takes many forms—in
housing markets, in financial markets (at least one of America’s large banks had to pay a very
large fine for its discriminatory practices in the run up to the crisis), and in labor markets. There
is a large literature explaining how such discrimination persists.37 38
Of course, market forces—the demand and supply for skilled workers, affected by changes in
technology and education—play an important role as well, even if those forces are partially

11
shaped by politics. But instead of these market forces and politics balancing each other out, with
the political process dampening the increase in inequalities of income and wealth in periods
when market forces have led to growing disparities, in the rich countries today the two have been
working together to increase inequality.
The price of inequality
The evidence is thus unsupportive of explanations of inequality solely focused on marginal
productivity. But what of the argument that we need inequality to grow?
A first justification for the claim that inequality is necessary for growth focuses on the role of
savings and investment in promoting growth, and is based on the observation that those at the top
save, while those at the bottom typically spend all of their earnings. Countries with a high share
of wages will thus not be able to accumulate capital as rapidly as those with a low share of
wages. The only way to generate savings required for long-term growth is thus to ensure
sufficient income for the rich.
This argument is particularly inapposite today, where the problem is, to use Bernanke’s term, a
global savings glut. 39 But even in those circumstances where growth would be increased by an
increase in national savings, there are better ways of inducing savings than increasing inequality.
The government can tax the income of the rich, and use the funds to finance either private or
public investment; such policies reduce inequalities in consumption and disposable income, and
lead to increased national savings (appropriately measured).
A second argument centers around the popular misconception that those at the top are the job
creators; and giving more money to them will thus create more jobs. Industrialized countries are
full of creative entrepreneurial people throughout the income distribution. What creates jobs is
demand: when there is demand, firms will create the jobs to satisfy that demand (especially if we
can get the financial system to work in the way it should, providing credit to small and medium-
sized enterprises).
In fact, as empirical research by the IMF has shown, inequality is associated with economic
instability. In particular, IMF researchers have shown that growth spells tend to be shorter when
income inequality is high. This result holds also when other determinants of growth duration
(like external shocks, property rights and macroeconomic conditions) are taken into account: on
average, a 10-percentile decrease in inequality increases the expected length of a growth spell by
one half.40 The picture does not change if one focuses on medium-term average growth rates
instead of growth duration. Recent empirical research, released by the OECD, shows that income
inequality has a negative and statistically significant effect on medium-term growth. It estimates
that in countries like the US, the UK and Italy overall economic growth would have been six to
nine percentage points higher in the last two decades, had income inequality not risen.41
There are different channels through which inequality harms the economy. First, inequality leads
to weak aggregate demand. The reason is easy to understand: those at the bottom spend a larger
fraction of their income than those at the top. 42 The problem may be compounded by monetary
authorities’ flawed responses to this weak demand. By lowering interest rates and relaxing

12
regulations monetary policy too easily gives rise to an asset bubble, the bursting of which leads
in turn to recession.43
Many interpretations of the current crisis have indeed emphasized the importance of
distributional concerns. 44 Growing inequality would have led to lower consumption but for the
effects of loose monetary policy and lax regulations, which led to a housing bubble and a
consumption boom. It was, in short, only growing debt that allowed consumption to be
sustained.45 But it was inevitable that the bubble would eventually break. And it was inevitable
that when it broke, the economy would go into a downturn.
Second, inequality of outcomes is associated with inequality of opportunity. When those at the
bottom of the income distribution are at great risk of not living up to their potential, the economy
pays a price not only with weaker demand today, but also with lower growth in the future. With
nearly one in four American children growing up in poverty, 46 many of them facing not just a
lack of educational opportunity, but also a lack of access to adequate nutrition and health, the
country’s long-term prospects are being put into jeopardy.
Third, societies with greater inequality are less likely to make public investments which enhance
productivity, such as in public transportation, infrastructure, technology, and education. If the
rich believe that they don’t need these public facilities, and worry that a strong government
which could increase the efficiency of the economy might at the same time use its powers to
redistribute income and wealth, it is not surprising that public investment is lower in countries
with higher inequality, Moreover, in such countries tax and other economic policies are likely to
encourage those activities that benefit the financial sector over more productive activities. In the
United States today returns on long term financial speculation (capital gains) are taxed at
approximately half the rate of labour, and speculative derivatives are given priority in bankruptcy
over workers. Tax laws encourage job creation abroad rather than at home. The result is a weaker
and more unstable economy. Reforming these policies – and using other policies to reduce rent-
seeking – would not only reduce inequality; they would improve economic performance.
It should be noted that the existence of these adverse effects of inequality on growth is itself
evidence against an explanation of today’s high level of inequality based on marginal
productivity theory. For the basic premise of marginal productivity is that those at the top are
simply receiving just deserts for their efforts, and that the rest of society benefits from their
activities. If that were so, we should expect to see higher growth associated with higher incomes
at the top. In fact, we see just the opposite.
Reversing inequality
A wide range of policies can help reduce inequality. They include more support for education,
including pre-school; increasing the minimum wage; strengthening earned-income tax credits;
strengthening the voice of workers in the workplace, including through unions; and more
effective enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. But there are four areas in particular that could
make inroads in the high level of inequality which now exists.47