The transition to a financialized economy has had a devastating impact on workers and consumers and exacerbated wealth and income inequality in the United States and around the world. In this article, the authors explain financialization, a two-fold economic strategy whereby individual corporations invest in the financial market- rather than make…

Social or distributive justice refers to just distributions of income and wealth. Because social justice is an essentially contested concept, it has no true or core meaning, only several conflicting interpretations. This pluralism creates a problem for teachers who must explain to students how the various interpretations differ and underlie policy…

The Gini index is one of the most commonly used indicators of income inequality, and its computation and interpretation require a thorough understanding of various quantitative literacy concepts. In this article, we describe a unit for an interdisciplinary quantitative literacy course at a community college that treats concepts of ratio and…

This paper addresses the convergence of inequality across social and economic dimensions in the United States. Chief among these are wealth accumulation, labor, and education. Specifically, I discuss the transference of wealth to the top of the income hierarchy, the automation and polarization of labor, and threats to public education.…

Generalized trust varies across individuals and countries. Past studies on trust have demonstrated that voluntary association membership, inequality and ethnic homogeneity at country level are important. However, those studies examined either individual-level or country-level factors separately. In this paper, we conceptualized the emergence of…

This article uses a social justice framework to problematize national and local policies in housing and education which propose to reduce poverty and improve educational performance of low-income students through mixed-income strategies. Drawing on research on Chicago, the article argues mixed-income strategies are part of the neoliberal…