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Toxic Inequality: How America's Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future
From a leading authority on race and public policy, a deeply researched account of how families rise and fall today
Since the Great Recession, most Americans' standard of living has stagnated or declined. Economic inequality is at historic highs. But inequality's impact differs by race; African Americans' net wealth is just a tenth that of white Americans, and over recent decades, white families have accumulated wealth at three times the rate of black families. In our increasingly diverse nation, sociologist Thomas M. Shapiro argues, wealth disparities must be understood in tandem with racial inequities -- a dangerous combination he terms "toxic inequality."
In Toxic Inequality , Shapiro reveals how these forces combine to trap families in place. Following nearly two hundred families of different races and income levels over a period of twelve years, Shapiro's research vividly documents the recession's toll on parents and children, the ways families use assets to manage crises and create opportunities, and the real reasons some families build wealth while others struggle in poverty. The structure of our neighborhoods, workplaces, and tax code-much more than individual choices-push some forward and hold others back. A lack of assets, far more common in families of color, can often ruin parents' careful plans for themselves and their children.
Toxic inequality may seem inexorable, but it is not inevitable. America's growing wealth gap and its yawning racial divide have been forged by history and preserved by policy, and only bold, race-conscious reforms can move us toward a more just society.
"Everyone concerned about the toxic effects of inequality must read this book." -- Robert B. Reich
"This is one of the most thought-provoking books I have read on economic inequality in the US." -- William Julius Wilson
Since the Great Recession, most Americans' standard of living has stagnated or declined. Economic inequality is at historic highs. But inequality's impact differs by race; African Americans' net wealth is just a tenth that of white Americans, and over recent decades, white families have accumulated wealth at three times the rate of black families. In our increasingly diverse nation, sociologist Thomas M. Shapiro argues, wealth disparities must be understood in tandem with racial inequities -- a dangerous combination he terms "toxic inequality."
In Toxic Inequality , Shapiro reveals how these forces combine to trap families in place. Following nearly two hundred families of different races and income levels over a period of twelve years, Shapiro's research vividly documents the recession's toll on parents and children, the ways families use assets to manage crises and create opportunities, and the real reasons some families build wealth while others struggle in poverty. The structure of our neighborhoods, workplaces, and tax code-much more than individual choices-push some forward and hold others back. A lack of assets, far more common in families of color, can often ruin parents' careful plans for themselves and their children.
Toxic inequality may seem inexorable, but it is not inevitable. America's growing wealth gap and its yawning racial divide have been forged by history and preserved by policy, and only bold, race-conscious reforms can move us toward a more just society.
"Everyone concerned about the toxic effects of inequality must read this book." -- Robert B. Reich
"This is one of the most thought-provoking books I have read on economic inequality in the US." -- William Julius Wilson
288 pages, Hardcover
Published March 14, 2017
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1295 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
October 24, 2017
One of the things I liked about this book were the stories.
You don’t get as many facts in this one as you do stories about people losing their homes, their jobs, and just about everything else.
Plus there are tons of stats. Here are some passages that stood out to me:
“David, like 85 percent of middle-class Americans polled in a 2012 survey, said it was more difficult to maintain living standards than it had been ten years earlier. A little more than six in ten middle-class families reported having had to cut back household spending. Today, it is both harder to get into the middle class and harder to stay there than at any time since World War II.” (p 93)
“Social Security provides widespread but not universal coverage; as of 2010, 14.4 percent of persons aged sixty-five or older were not receiving income from Social Security as they lacked sufficient paid and reported work histories to gain coverage.” (p 115)
“Whereas 62 percent of workers enrolled in a single retirement plan in 1983 had a defined benefit pension, by 2013, 71 percent of those enrolled in a single plan had defined contribution plans like 401 (k)s.” (p 117)
You don’t get as many facts in this one as you do stories about people losing their homes, their jobs, and just about everything else.
Plus there are tons of stats. Here are some passages that stood out to me:
“David, like 85 percent of middle-class Americans polled in a 2012 survey, said it was more difficult to maintain living standards than it had been ten years earlier. A little more than six in ten middle-class families reported having had to cut back household spending. Today, it is both harder to get into the middle class and harder to stay there than at any time since World War II.” (p 93)
“Social Security provides widespread but not universal coverage; as of 2010, 14.4 percent of persons aged sixty-five or older were not receiving income from Social Security as they lacked sufficient paid and reported work histories to gain coverage.” (p 115)
“Whereas 62 percent of workers enrolled in a single retirement plan in 1983 had a defined benefit pension, by 2013, 71 percent of those enrolled in a single plan had defined contribution plans like 401 (k)s.” (p 117)
October 14, 2021
Great read on how inequality gets entrenched across generations due to who we decide to tax, not tax, and invest in. Inequality is a choice, not an accident!
February 21, 2019
Inequality is systemic and affluent people of various means, and not just the super rich, are hoarding not only wealth but also opportunity, and rewriting the rules of the game to make sure they always succeed. Meritocracy my ass!
March 10, 2021
God bok, dog rettet veldig mot USA. Svært detaljert i hva som egentlig skaper ulikheter—til tider kanskje litt i overkant detaljert.
April 15, 2018
I usually to not bother to write reviews especially bad ones for popular books since they draw more trouble than they are worth, but I must for this one.I did not make it past the introduction without finding a material misrepresentation of fact. In it they state that banks such as Countrywide and others "stipulated" to race discrimination in lending as part of their settlement agreements with the Department of Justice and actually cited to the government webpages with the settlement agreements. I actually looked up the agreements because based on prior experience with such settlements I knew they always stipulate to the opposite: the settlement is not an admission of liability. As always, the cited agreements after repeating the governments' allegations stipulated the settlement was not an admission of liability. As always, to save litigation expenses, the banks settle for pennies on the dollar and the AG gets political brownie points without anything ever being proved or admitted. The writer did not bother to look up the cited agreements and he probably knew the readers never would. The book is full of such gamesmanship. It is impossible to talk about race in this country. One of the reasons for it being so is books such as this that distort everything to reach a per-determined conclusion: race not class is the dominant explanation for all social inequality regarding race; they reach this conclusion without even bothering to define race. It is simply not worthwhile to read anything called "empirical" on race written by academics anymore. Use your instincts and life experience --- if you have any. One can find statistical correlations for anything if one looks hard enough. Doubt these writers can do the math. They seem to have others create the correlations they need and they then incorporate them into polemics.
July 15, 2018
With Toxic Inequality, Thomas M. Shapiro uses narrative and statistics to great effect, describing the harrowing experience of being a person who is not wealthy in today’s America. With many of the families, they do not desire long-term assistance. They have pride in their capacities to work, but if your job only pays minimum wage and has no benefits whatsoever, the smallest setback can totally destroy your entire wealth base. Shapiro argues that this is a basis of many of the issues in America, and I cannot help but agree. This also comes in line with the disappearing Middle Class in the United States. Back in the 1970s, the largest employer was General Motors. They offered benefits and great pay. Now the largest employer is Wal-Mart, and we know what they offer to their employees.
Most of the families that have these issues are families of color. People that are Black or Latino are disproportionately well represented in such situations. It does not help that there is a massive snowball effect in place as well. People may chide others for even taking a subprime loan or some other such ‘deal’ but if that is your only offer and your credit score is fantastic that might be your ticket out of a slum or other situation. Being in a different area also allows you to attend a better school and attain the benefits of a well-supplied district. So I can’t really blame someone for taking advantage of such a thing. So for instance, if you are Black and have a great resume, you might receive discrimination just from your name alone.
In any case, this book was really tragic and put me in a melancholy mood. It makes me wonder if we should just start over with this whole America thing, though I doubt that it would work. As long as the concept of property has existed, there has been inequality between us. That isn’t going to go away any time soon. Luckily for me, Shapiro offers some solutions, though to the wealthy it might be something that is hard to take. It mostly has to do with offering better jobs that have benefits and such. If you are Wal-Mart, you won’t do that, since you are a terrible place. The same thing goes for all of the giant corporations nowadays.
Most of the families that have these issues are families of color. People that are Black or Latino are disproportionately well represented in such situations. It does not help that there is a massive snowball effect in place as well. People may chide others for even taking a subprime loan or some other such ‘deal’ but if that is your only offer and your credit score is fantastic that might be your ticket out of a slum or other situation. Being in a different area also allows you to attend a better school and attain the benefits of a well-supplied district. So I can’t really blame someone for taking advantage of such a thing. So for instance, if you are Black and have a great resume, you might receive discrimination just from your name alone.
In any case, this book was really tragic and put me in a melancholy mood. It makes me wonder if we should just start over with this whole America thing, though I doubt that it would work. As long as the concept of property has existed, there has been inequality between us. That isn’t going to go away any time soon. Luckily for me, Shapiro offers some solutions, though to the wealthy it might be something that is hard to take. It mostly has to do with offering better jobs that have benefits and such. If you are Wal-Mart, you won’t do that, since you are a terrible place. The same thing goes for all of the giant corporations nowadays.
Read
July 8, 2020Both of these books are pretty similar in that they address financial issues in the US. One, $2 a Day, focuses on the individual struggles of people who happen to fall lowest on the poverty line, yet not low enough to receive government aid. The other book, Toxic Inequality, does weave some anecdotal stories into a larger narrative of broader national policies as to how inequality became our present reality, as well as suggestions to solve it.
$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America details the lives of several people who eke out a living barely above the line that can grant them government assistance. In chapters on Food, Work, Housing and others we meet people who work a daily grind to trying to live the best they can, all while getting rejected for much needed aid that could make their lives a little easier. The author also explains the broader social and political causes as to why aid is just out of reach to those who need it most. This book is both infuriating and informative to read.
Toxic Inequality, is a book, much like how John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, intersects personal stories of people who have been affected by broader fiscal policies. It’s not as anecdotal as $2 a Day, yet the author goes into wonderfully explaining the history of aid policies over the past century and the politics that changed past ones into current programs. There are less chapters, yet each go into greater detail. I think it’s fine to read it at one’s own pace so the full weight of the policy changes written in the book can be grasped by the reader.
I only got to skim $2 a Day and would like to read it again in further detail. I seemed pulled into the stories of people striving to make their lives better and I felt like I could have known them personally and, therefore, were pretty relatable. I would recommend both books to anyone who’d like to explore how income/wealth inequality is impacting people and solutions that the authors suggest would make for great discussion and possible ideas for activism.
$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America details the lives of several people who eke out a living barely above the line that can grant them government assistance. In chapters on Food, Work, Housing and others we meet people who work a daily grind to trying to live the best they can, all while getting rejected for much needed aid that could make their lives a little easier. The author also explains the broader social and political causes as to why aid is just out of reach to those who need it most. This book is both infuriating and informative to read.
Toxic Inequality, is a book, much like how John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, intersects personal stories of people who have been affected by broader fiscal policies. It’s not as anecdotal as $2 a Day, yet the author goes into wonderfully explaining the history of aid policies over the past century and the politics that changed past ones into current programs. There are less chapters, yet each go into greater detail. I think it’s fine to read it at one’s own pace so the full weight of the policy changes written in the book can be grasped by the reader.
I only got to skim $2 a Day and would like to read it again in further detail. I seemed pulled into the stories of people striving to make their lives better and I felt like I could have known them personally and, therefore, were pretty relatable. I would recommend both books to anyone who’d like to explore how income/wealth inequality is impacting people and solutions that the authors suggest would make for great discussion and possible ideas for activism.
June 12, 2017
The topic is important: wealth inequality, racial inequality, and the unfortunate synergy between them. The author is well familiar with the issues; as part of the Leveraging Mobility Study, he interviewed a wide range of families about their economic situation in 1998 and interviewed the same families again 12 years later. Shapiro does a good job pointing out the many institutional factors that perpetuate and worsen conditions, including issues around home ownership, employment, inheritance, and federal policy (especially regarding taxes). In the last chapter, he sketches some ideas to help, but he neglects to mention that the most important factor is to have a nation which wants its wealth to go to more than 10% of the population, with essentially no hope of the lower classes to rise out of serfdom. The book is somewhat dry at times (especially the last chapter), but personal stories of the interviewed families help spice it up. The information in it is worth reading regardless.
May 10, 2018
The stories presented would give a reader unfamiliar with this delicate subject an excellent view of the “haves” and the “have nots”; How some families are scratching and striving to get ahead, others on “terra firma” only to have the ground shaken underneath them by unemployment or illness, then of course those families living on easy street (i.e. trust fund kids).
The book was clearly written and very detailed although one can get bogged down in the statistics used to support the argument. I did expect more from the solutions given at the end of the book as these aren’t solutions that those familiar with the issue haven’t heard or discussed before. Overall, GREAT READ!
The book was clearly written and very detailed although one can get bogged down in the statistics used to support the argument. I did expect more from the solutions given at the end of the book as these aren’t solutions that those familiar with the issue haven’t heard or discussed before. Overall, GREAT READ!
February 11, 2021
This book was fine, I was very put off by an early description "Driving through their neighborhood in 1998 I imagined that only a Katrina-like disaster..." No no you did not think that since Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2005, also you were in St. Louis, when was the last time a Hurricane hit St Louis. So I guess despite all of their qualifications I felt the author was a bit out of touch and I question who the authors intended audience is. Policy makers?
Still useful information about how we ended up where we are now.
Still useful information about how we ended up where we are now.
December 12, 2024
First introduction to the eyebrow-raising research practice of snowball sampling. Nonetheless a compelling and informative look at how American wealth inequality runs so deep despite having higher and more progressive tax rates than back home in Singapore. Recurring themes include tax policy, homeownership and property, education, inheritance. Gets repetitive but maybe that's the point. Read for a course in Program in Ed this semester.
May 20, 2021
For me, this book was a strange mix of academic and editorial writing. I appreciated its comprehensive exploration of wealth inequality and the way they humanize policy/economic issues with personal stories from their research project interviews. But, I got lost at times in the disjointed writing style.
October 7, 2021
What a depressing read! I’ve read widely in this topic, so knew a lot of it. But it’s always sad to read again. And even sadder to think how we could change the with just a few simple changes that we don’t make for one reason or another. I loved that this one connected wealth/income/racial inequality all together.
May 7, 2017
An absolute must read
Fantastic book that deserves attention and careful consideration. Well written, chock full data and personal stories. A very necessary read for those that care for the well being of our nation and our fellow people.
Fantastic book that deserves attention and careful consideration. Well written, chock full data and personal stories. A very necessary read for those that care for the well being of our nation and our fellow people.
December 26, 2020
Finally got to this one after seeing it at a bookstore years ago! It was good. The stats were good and I'm pretty sure I basically knew most of it, but digging into actual families and their situations before / after 2008 was a great move.
January 29, 2025
Once again, a last minute finish (12:26am) but we’re counting it bc it’s still Tuesday in my brain. Pretty good, didn’t love in the beginning but then has interesting facts in the second bit that I never knew about. 3.5
October 21, 2025
There is toxic inequality because of the way things are. That's about how this book went. There were too many gaps in the data, comparing apples to oranges, and I was really hoping to learn and gain a new perspective based in truth but this book just wasn't it.
June 19, 2017
If you've read much on social justice and inequality, this will mostly be repeat information for you. But if you're brand new to the topic, Shapiro gives a solid overview.
April 12, 2018
Brutal Truths
This book lays bare a lot of the systemic issues which result in a significant race based split between haves and have nots
This book lays bare a lot of the systemic issues which result in a significant race based split between haves and have nots
April 10, 2019
Ignore the past, never mind the reason, the preacher is here and he will tell you how bad things "truly" are.
November 28, 2019
It provides a peak into the various issues surrounding inequality in US which is interesting and new to me. I especially like the interviews - made it a lot more real than just a bunch of statistics.
December 23, 2019
Another interesting an important book. Some statistical context to the suggestion "check your privilege" raised by another book I recently read. An important read.
April 26, 2021
This is an excellent complement to The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. Toxic Inequality offers anecdotal evidence to support the historical and analytical data provided by Rothstein.
August 13, 2021
A Research based analysis of the drivers of inequality in the US. It successfully raises the alarm and would grab the attention of students and casual readers alike.
March 7, 2023
Decent and brutal.
It’s unfortunate how detached we as a people are from failing schools and are only exposed to inequity through books like this. We must do better.
It’s unfortunate how detached we as a people are from failing schools and are only exposed to inequity through books like this. We must do better.
October 21, 2023
Enlightening. Redundant, but eye opening.
February 20, 2025
Very informative, filled with stats.
March 17, 2017
A well-researched and great introduction to income inequality in the United States. Shapiro, through hours and hours of interviews paints a personal picture of what it means to be financially insecure and how our system (sometimes even when it's well-intentioned) perpetuates economic and racial divide. He doesn't just lay on the problems though, there are plenty of solutions suggested in this book as well.
April 21, 2017
Thomas Shapiro has done grown breaking work on racial inequality. Toxic Inequality goes further in detailing how the racial gap keeps widening even with a few changes in social policy. I have followed the literature and know much of what Shapiro covers in this book about how the wealth gap makes mobility difficult. So I very much appreciate the packaging of the data and his arguments. He focuses on housing, employment, the role of inheritance and offers a very coherent argument about the role of government. Using a tool that looks at how policies impact the wealth gap is insightful. It is important to learn that social policies still favor the rich, even when much of the media attention is on the little that goes to people in need. Following the lives of people initially interviewed 1998-1999 with interviews in 2010-2011 provides many insights into the presence or lack of wealth means for families. We see what the Great Recession did to their lives and how wealth protected the few who had it. In the interviews we also can see the stress of living on the edge, not knowing if you can secure a future for your children or what retirement holds. The final chapter offers insights into polices that can make a difference. It in this era when there is a huge gap between the findings of social science research and the policies that are attractive to Congress, we need to read this chapter carefully and argument for what we know will make a difference in the lives of people in need and the overall health of the nation. If I was still teaching poverty, I would use this book. It is very accessible and a good starting point for discussions across political gaps.
February 14, 2019
A must read for white people. If you are a racist person, just move along please.
Shapiro presents well-documented results of decades of research, analytics, and personal story as he and his team follow the outcomes of different families through events leading to the Great Recession and its aftermath of increasing poverty in the United States.
A particular focus is generational wealth - the type of wealth that cushions white people from calamities in life that can wipe out EACH generation of a Black family's financial security. When white people stumble, they can recover via support from family, the ability to borrow, and the likelihood they will be buoyed by the white safety net. White families are less likely to financially support aging parents and other family members, while this is a cultural norm for Black and Brown families. Systemic racism in education, housing, the legal system, the prison system, healthcare and all levels of government endures.
A stark outline emerges of the rapid, cavernous wealth gap between white people and everyone else. The thoughtful white reader must reflect on their own privilege, and consider what their role will be going forward toward a world of less disparity. Black and Brown readers already know all this, because they may be living it.
Shapiro presents well-documented results of decades of research, analytics, and personal story as he and his team follow the outcomes of different families through events leading to the Great Recession and its aftermath of increasing poverty in the United States.
A particular focus is generational wealth - the type of wealth that cushions white people from calamities in life that can wipe out EACH generation of a Black family's financial security. When white people stumble, they can recover via support from family, the ability to borrow, and the likelihood they will be buoyed by the white safety net. White families are less likely to financially support aging parents and other family members, while this is a cultural norm for Black and Brown families. Systemic racism in education, housing, the legal system, the prison system, healthcare and all levels of government endures.
A stark outline emerges of the rapid, cavernous wealth gap between white people and everyone else. The thoughtful white reader must reflect on their own privilege, and consider what their role will be going forward toward a world of less disparity. Black and Brown readers already know all this, because they may be living it.
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