Teaching About Economic Inequality in a Diverse Democracy: Politics, Ideology, and Difference

If we could agree on one common assumption that competing theories of democracy share, it might be this: governments that are of the people, by the people, and for the people require the people to have some knowledge and familiarity not only with democratic institutions but also contemporary issues and debates. Yet studies of what people know about current political affairs reveal significant gaps. Although many Americans are familiar with debates surrounding health care or immigration, far fewer are aware of the contested positions concerning minimum wage, supreme court appointees, or a variety of international treaties (Pew 2015). One topic that is both central to current political discourse and especially misunderstood is economic inequality. While citizens require accurate information about economic inequality, empirical evidence suggests that this knowledge is not widely held. In their 2011 study, researchers Michael Norton and Daniel Ariely asked a representative sample of more than 5,000 Americans to estimate the distribution of wealth (including savings, stock holdings, and property) in the United States. In other words, if the total wealth of the US were represented by a pizza, how big a slice would be owned by the top fifth, the second wealthiest fifth, and so on, down to the poorest fifth? The average American believes that the richest fifth of the population owns about 59% of the wealth and that the bottom 40% (lowest two quintiles combined) own about 9%--a distribution much like Sweden's actual distribution. The reality for the United States differs widely from the estimates: the wealthiest quintile of Americans actually owns 84% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 40% of the population owns only 0.3% (Wolff 2012). Underestimating inequality does not tell us much about whether Americans think anything should necessarily change. But Norton and Ariely also asked participants to convey their ideal distribution. How should wealth in the United States be distributed across the quintiles? The results show that most Americans (92%) would prefer to live in a society that is far more equitable. In fact, 92% of respondents would like to see a distribution in which the richest fifth of the population owns 32% of the wealth and the bottom 40% owns 25%. Of particular note, Republicans and Democrats alike chose this type of distribution. Americans, it seems, believe they live in Scandinavia but actually live in a country that, in terms of economic inequ