Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding Americans' Thinking about Inequality

美国日益严重的经济不平等引起了许多美国人的注意。纵观政治意识形态和收入范围，大多数美国人对他们在美国看到的收入和财富不平等持批评态度，大多数美国人希望更平等的分配。然而，与长期存在的理论预期相反，即随着财富和收入集中度的提高，对再分配的需求将会上升，而最近的证据表明，随着不平等程度的加剧，对再分配政策的支持似乎有所减少。这项研究将通过深入考察美国人对经济不平等现象的思考，来理解美国人对再分配政策的困惑情绪。公众舆论对再分配政策的混乱和不和谐的性质表明，有必要使用定性的方法来研究，这种方法特别适合捕捉和理解这种混乱但有影响力的情绪。这项研究正是做到了这一点，通过深度访谈(分为富裕和贫穷社区)来探索美国人对经济不平等的思考的复杂性，同时通过创造性地重新参与20世纪80年代初关于这个主题的一项有影响力的定性研究(詹妮弗·霍奇希尔德的《公平是什么？》)，提供了一个强大的跨时间视角。通过对S遗址和方法的重访，利用过去几十年发生的巨大经济变化，这个项目在新的实证方向上扩展了她的发现。如果正如证据所表明的那样，大多数美国人对目前的收入分配不满意，那么了解他们对变革的渴望，以及这种渴望与他们对解决方案的看法之间的联系或脱节，对于广泛的利益相关者来说是重要的，包括所有那些试图理解不平等和不平等的学者、政策制定者和公民。

Growing economic inequality in the U.S. has captured the attention of many Americans. Across political ideologies and income ranges, most Americans are critical of the inequality in income and wealth they see in the U.S., and most Americans want a more equal distribution. However, contrary to long-standing theoretical expectations that would predict a rise in the demand for redistribution in response to increasing wealth and income concentration, recent evidence suggests that support for redistributive policy appears to decrease in response to increasing inequality. This research will make sense of Americans' confusing sentiments about redistributive policy through an in-depth examination of Americans' thinking about the phenomenon of economic inequality.The muddled and dissonant nature of public opinion toward redistributive policies suggests the need for a study using qualitative methods that are uniquely suited to capture and make sense of these kinds of messy but influential sentiments. This research does just that, using in-depth interviews (divided among rich and poor neighborhoods) to probe the complexity of Americans' thinking about economic inequality while providing a powerful cross-time perspective through the creative re-engagement of an influential qualitative study on the topic from the early 1980s (Jennifer Hochschild's What's Fair?). Using a revisit to Hochschild?s site and methods to capitalize on the dramatic economic changes over the past several decades, this project extends her findings in new empirical directions. If, as the evidence suggests, a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with current income distributions, then understanding their desire for change and how it is connected or disconnected from their opinions about solutions is of importance to a broad range of stakeholders, including all of those scholars, policy makers, and citizens who seek to understand inequality and disparity.