Zachary Cloward

James Celestino

English 1010 

24 January 2021

Summary of the Article “Richer and Poorer Accounting for Inequality”

In the article “Richer and Poorer: Accounting for Inequality,” written by Jill Lepore,

published in “The New Yorker”, in New York, in the year 2018 Jill’s main focus was on

economic inequality in the United States. She starts off by talking about the origin of the Gini

index that she uses throughout to talk about the level of economic inequality in the United States.

Jill then talks about how the United States has the highest economic inequality in the world and 

the history of how it has been increasing since 1967. Following this, Jill talks about how

economists are not the only ones concerned about this inequality. Political scientists are just as

likely to study the level of inequality to find out how much the United States can take.

Jill talked extensively about the book “Our Kids: The American dream in Crisis” by

Robert Putnam. In it Robert talks about his hometown of Port Clinton, which Jill describes as a

reasonable middle town, and uses it to describe economic inequality. Jill uses many of Robert’s

own descriptions throughout the article to share the stats. She follows talking about Our kids by

talking about why America has the highest amount of economic inequality. She spoke on a few

other people’s view of why this inequality exists. One of those was Anthony Atkinson. He

shared not only why government is one of the main reasons, but presents a few solutions. This

idea that government is the main problem is what Jill is trying to get across.