Why Politicians Don't Level the Playing Field

America suffers from shockingly deep income and racial gaps—inequalities that persist despite promises by public officials to reduce them. A ​new study published in Science offers a possible explanation why policymakers have made such little progress on these social problems: simply put, the country’s economic and political elite may be more likely than an average person to make decisions that worsen disparities.

“[The study] helps to make sense of why the policies enacted by the elite seem to diverge from the apparent state of preferences of everyday people,” Raymond Fisman, the now-Boston University economist who co-authored the study, tells CityLab. “Lots of people say they're looking for more redistribution, yet we get a relatively muted response to rising inequality."