PUBPL 471Economic Inequality and Public Policy

3 credits · Public Policy · Penn State

Why is the United States among the most unequal affluent democracies and what role does public policy play in this? What policies successfully reduce wealth and income inequalities? How does economic inequality feed back into the policy process to shape subsequent responses to inequality? These are among the questions that we will examine in this course, which will look at the interrelationship between public policy, economic inequality and power differentials in the policy process. We will focus mostly on affluent democracies, and especially the United States.