Here is a standard model of the link between public opinion and income inequality in the United States: concern about inequality (public opinion) → Democratic president → redistribution → reduction in income inequality.

An equally commonplace notion is that Americans do not care much about income inequality. Few Americans have any idea how much inequality there is, according to this view, and those that do are not especially bothered if they perceive inequality to be high or increasing. These two books tell a different story. In Class War? What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs find that Americans do object to high inequality. But this does not prompt them to want government to boost redistribution; instead, Americans want government to increase policies that improve economic opportunity. In The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States, Nathan Kelly finds that this is exactly what Democratic presidents tend to do. They move policy to the left, but they do so largely via programs that enhance opportunity, and those programs have the effect of reducing market income inequality. This, much more than redistribution, is what results in less inequality under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones. Both books are valuable, worth reading and grappling with.

Page and Jacobs focus on Americans' attitudes toward inequality and government policy. Although they draw on existing public opinion survey data, mainly they report the findings of a new survey conducted for them in the summer of 2007 (prior to the recession). They find that “m]ost Americans are aware of high and increasing economic inequality. Most are unhappy about it. Most favor a wide range of concrete, pragmatic government programs when their well-being is threatened or opportunity is blocked by forces beyond their control. Most are willing to pay taxes to foot the bill” (pp. x–xi).

What programs do Americans favor? Mainly ones that expand economic opportunity, rather than ones that directly redistribute income or wealth from the rich to the poor. At the center of this is education, but Page and Jacobs also find strong support for government assistance with jobs, wages, health care, income security in retirement, and an income floor for those unable to work. Americans, they conclude, are “conservative egalitarians.” They do not like economic inequality and they favor government action to address it, but the government response they prefer is one that expands economic opportunity and assures economic security.

Page and Jacobs's findings are broadly consistent with those of several other studies of American attitudes toward economic inequality and government activism (Jennifer Hochschild, What's Fair?, 1981; James R. Kleugel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality, 1986; Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 1999; Leslie McCall and Lane Kenworthy, “Americans' Social Policy Preferences in the Era of Rising Inequality,” Perspectives on Politics 7 [September 2009]: 459–484). Class War? is the most concise and readable summary statement available. It is ideal for use in undergraduate teaching. Moreover, Page and Jacobs' survey suggests an interesting fact not emphasized in previous studies: These patterns hold across income groups and among both Democrats and Republicans—not evenly, but with more muted differences than we might expect: “Majorities of all economic and political stripes actually agree that economic inequality has widened, that this is worrisome, and that the government should respond… Instead of class [and partisan] war, the evidence shows a high degree of positive, constructive agreement on what should be done” (p. 14).

For me, the only noteworthy shortcoming of Class War? is that Page and Jacobs do little in their survey to probe Americans' views about the peculiarly top-heavy nature of the rise in U.S. income inequality. This is understandable, as data revealing this have become available relatively recently. Still, I hope that future surveys on attitudes toward income inequality and what to do about it address this shortcoming head-on. Does it matter to people that rising income inequality consists mainly of a growing separation between the top 1% and everyone else? How, if at all, does this affect their preferences for government action?

In The Politics of Income Inequality, Kelly attempts to synthesize and extend macro politics and power resources theories, and to assess their effectiveness in explaining developments in income inequality in the United States from 1947 to 2000. Macro politics theory asserts that aggregate public opinion is a key determinant of government policies. Power resources theory contends that labor strength and left parties influence government redistribution and, hence, income inequality. Kelly says that macro politics theory is deficient in not going further to see if policy has a noteworthy impact on socioeconomic outcomes, such as inequality. Power resources theory, he suggests, has underemphasized the potential impact of left government on nonredistributive policies that may influence the market (pretransfer-pretax) distribution of income. And its exponents, too, have largely sidestepped empirical investigation of the effect of policies on inequality outcomes.

Kelly's empirical analyses suggest that Democratic presidents and policy liberalism (an aggregate measure created by James Stimson) reduce market inequality and increase redistribution. His novel finding is that a president's party and policy liberalism have stronger effects on market inequality than on redistribution. Thus, unlike in at least some other rich nations, in the United States the impact of power resources and partisanship on income inequality appears to work chiefly through the market distribution of income, rather than through government redistributive efforts.

This conclusion is similar to one reached recently by Larry Bartels in his book Unequal Democracy (2008). For Bartels, the key policy is macroeconomic (fiscal and monetary). Democratic presidents have tended to pursue economic growth and low unemployment, whereas Republican presidents tend to worry more about keeping inflation in check. This has produced faster income growth in the lower parts of the income distribution, and, hence, less income inequality, under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones. Kelly's policy liberalism measure does not include macroeconomic policy, yet he, too, finds a strong effect of a president's party on pregovernment inequality.

Is this correct? Has the president's party been a key determinant of market income inequality in the United States? This certainly seems plausible, but I have several worries. First, Kelly's finding applies to the period from 1947 to 2000 as a whole. My own analyses suggest that the impact of a president's party on income inequality has shrunk considerably or perhaps even disappeared since the 1970s (Lane Kenworthy, “How Much Do Presidents Influence Income Inequality?” in Challenge, March/April 2010). These two conclusions are not necessarily incompatible, but they have different implications for the continued relevance of the theory.

Second, there are questions about the data and measures. For his empirical analyses, Kelly needs data on the market distribution of income and government redistribution. The Census Bureau has such data, but only beginning in 1979. Kelly, therefore, imputes market income inequality and redistribution, with the distribution of the total quantity of taxes and transfers across income quintiles assumed to remain constant over time. This procedure is defensible but potentially problematic for earlier decades. For recent decades, a concern about the author's inequality measure is that it does not capture the sharp rise of incomes among the top 1%. According to his measure, pregovernment income inequality decreased during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, but data that include the top 1% suggest that inequality soared during these years.

Third, I want to know more about the causal mechanisms. In what ways does policy liberalism help to reduce pretransfer-pretax income inequality? Kelly suggests that it occurs through “market conditioning,” which refers to any type of influence of any government policy on the behavior of economic actors. He mentions tax incentives, education, and regulation of business as examples. Other possibilities include the minimum wage and rules governing union organizing. Which market conditioning policies were enacted or altered by which Democratic presidents, with what effects? In Kelly's view, this is unimportant: “The theory of distributional outcomes that I have outlined argues that nearly every governmental policy either redistributes incomes or conditions markets. I am agnostic about which micro policies actually generate different distributional outcomes via the market conditioning mechanism” (p. 127). I would prefer the black box to be opened up.

These two books contribute usefully to ongoing research on the politics of income inequality in rich countries. As I suggested earlier, together they offer a compelling story about the relationship among public opinion, presidents, government policy, and income inequality. It is a story that challenges conventional thinking among many scholars, journalists, pundits, and policymakers. And it offers fertile ground for further tilling.