Drivers, Consequences and Solutions of Income and Wealth Inequality

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the guidance emanating from numerous scholarly works, the generalized perception of increasing inequality has now become an indisputable issue (see also Cagé and Piketty, 2025). Undoubtedly, global statistics in recent times have been heavily influenced by the Asian catching-up process—particularly that of China (Piketty, 2020, Wan and Clementi, 2021)—but the recent and persistent economic crisis in Western countries has demonstrated a deterioration and hollowing out of the middle class (Clementi et al., 2017, 2018; Schettino and Khan, 2020; Schettino et al. 2021). Thus, even in Western capitalist nations, the phenomenon of income polarization and, even more so, of wealth polarization has given rise to that process of accumulation of misery alongside capital, as already outlined by Karl Marx (Das Kapital, I, 23). This Special Issue invites scholars and academics from all over the world to contribute towards understanding whether this trend of accumulating wealth and capital can in some way be restrained and whether this enormous disparity could ultimately call into question the values of the so-called liberal democracy that underpin most Western nations. Particular interest will be given to the empirical application of new methodologies, as well as to the theoretical and empirical analysis of multidimensional and factorial (functional) distributions.

Reference

• Cagé J & T Piketty, (2025) A History of Political Conflict, Harvard University Press, 2025.
• Clementi, F., Dabalen, A. L., Molini, V., & Schettino, F. (2017). When the Centre Cannot Hold: Patterns of Polarization in Nigeria. Review of Income and Wealth, 63(4), 608-632.
• Clementi, F., Molini, V., & Schettino, F. (2018). All that glitters is not gold: polarization amid poverty reduction in Ghana. World Development, 102, 275-291.
• Marx K, (1863) Das Kapital, Penguin, London
• Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and ideology. Harvard University Press.
• Schettino, F., Gabriele, A., & Khan, H. A. (2021). Polarization and the middle class in China: A non-parametric evaluation using CHNS and CHIP data. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 57, 251-264.
• Schettino, F., & Khan, H. A. (2020). Income polarization in the USA: What happened to the middle class in the last few decades?. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 53, 149-161.
• Wan, H., & Clementi, F. (2021). The long-term evolution of income polarisation in China, 1995-2018. The Journal of Development Studies, 57(11), 1945-1972.

Prof. Dr. Francesco Schettino
Guest Editor

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