IN THE GREAT EDUCATION DEBATE that has animated American public life for the last several decades, the players roughly divide into two camps. The so-called “reformers” say education can, in Horace Mann’s words, be the “great equalizer” through which children of all backgrounds succeed. They support the standards and accountability measures that schools have imposed […]
Income inequality
Posted inThe Download
Ed reform turncoat or just a more balanced position?
In the great education debate that has animated American public life for the last several decades, the players roughly divide into two camps. The so-called “reformers” say education can, in Horace Mann’s words, be the “great equalizer” through which children of all backgrounds succeed. They support the standards and accountability measures that schools have imposed […]
Posted inEconomy
Gender pay gap hits Latina women hard
Equal Pay Day symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what white men earned in the previous year. Today’s marking of that ignoble milestone means women must work an extra three months – all of last year plus the first three months of 2019 – to catch up with last year’s earnings for white men. But even more […]
Posted inEconomy
Middle class ‘slowly clawing its way back’
THE AMERICAN DREAM has long been predicated on a strong and growing middle class. That’s why there has been so much talk in recent years about the withering of that dream. Growing income inequality and stagnant wages among all but those at the top have made the goal of a stable middle-class life an elusive […]
Posted inThe Download
Middle class ‘slowly clawing its way back’
The American Dream has long been predicated on a strong and growing middle class. That’s why there has been so much talk in recent years about the withering of that dream. Growing income inequality and stagnant wages among all but those at the top have made the goal of a stable middle-class life an elusive […]
Posted inEconomy
Puerto Ricans struggle to rebuild lives in Mass.
ON A CRISP morning in November, Veronica Perez and Limarie Rivera, both self-evacuees from Puerto Rico, borrow a car from Rivera’s cousin and make their way to the New North Citizens’ Council in Springfield. New North is one of nearly two dozen welcome centers around the state designated as a first stop for people coming […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Fighting inequality: A losing battle?
It’s the overarching issue of our time, so income inequality was certainly deserving of the package of pieces devoted to the topic in yesterday’s Globe Ideas section. There was only one problem with the four stories on the subject: Once you were done reading them all, rather than having a better understanding of how the […]
Posted inThe Download
A little bit less unequal
We have become accustomed to the drumbeat of bad news about income equality and the sluggish economic recovery since the Great Recession. Stories have documented the seemingly endless ways in which, to borrow from a prominent area pol, the economy seems “rigged” against the middle class, while those at the top reap all the gains. […]
Posted inThe Download
A region coming apart
In this time of attention to growing income inequality in the US, the Boston Sunday Globe layered on a look at an important corollary to the separation of incomes: the growing geographic segregation by income. Reporter David Scharfenberg, using data for Eastern Massachusetts crunched by sociologists Kendra Bischoff at Cornell and Sean Reardon at Stanford, […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
What do Hillary Clinton, the Globe’s Pulitzer, and Demi Moore have in common?
Income inequality seems to be a recurring theme in the news today in everything from presidential politics to Pulitzer Prizes to the for-sale sign on Demi Moore’s New York co-op. Let’s start with Hillary Clinton. She headed to New Hampshire to court skeptical liberals who tend to be supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The […]