We are entering a recession – but what did we learn from the last one?
As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, it is abundantly clear that the global economy is entering a recession – the first we’ve seen since 2008.
Some officials have compared the last period of economic decline – also know as the Great Recession – to the Depression, which began in 1929.
Yet it is clear that these two downturns differed not only in severity but also in the consequences they had for inequality in the United States.
Though the Depression was bigger and longer than the Great Recession, the decades following the Great Depression substantially reduced the wealth of the rich and improved the economic security of many workers. In contrast, the Great Recession exacerbated both income and wealth inequality.
Some scholars have attributed this phenomenon to a weak...