Today on the podcast, why are more unequal neighborhoods sometimes better at promoting the collective good?
A world of high inequality is, in many ways, a world in which the fortunes of the rich are detached from the welfare of the poor. It’s a world in which the affluent are less reliant on public goods for securing their own safety and wellbeing. Those with money can purchase essential services – even things like security, sewage systems, or street lights – on private markets – rather than turning to the government. A highly unequal society is thus one in which the affluent may have little reason to support public infrastructure and services – or the high taxes required to finance them. It’s a society, in short, that’s going to have a hard time providing widespread public goods. The result can be a vicious circle – deteriorating living conditions among the poorest and growing comfort and prosperity among the better-off.
But our guest today argues that things don’t always have to work this way – that the consequences of inequality depend not only on who has what, but also on where. Dr. Alice Xu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice and Department of Political Science. In her article published in the American Political Science Review – and a book project currently in progress – Alice argues that whether or not the affluent support the provision of public goods depends on patterns of residential segregation and integration.
As Alice argues, when the middle and upper classes live in close proximity to the poor, their fortunes are more closely intertwined than they are in cities that are highly segregated by social class. In an integrated city, when the poor experience unsafe streets or disease-ridden sewage runoff, so too do their better-off neighbors.
Alice talks to us about the in-depth, mixed method study she carried out in several cities in Brazil – one of the world’s most unequal countries. We dig into how class-integrated neighborhoods sometimes escape inequality’s vicious circle – as the middle and upper classes demand that the state invest more generously in urban infrastructure and services for everyone. This is work that doesn’t just shed new light on the political economy of inequality but also holds important lessons for the planning and governance of the world’s cities – in particular, showing just what is at stake in avoiding high levels of segregation by social class.
We hope you enjoy this conversation. To stay informed about future episodes, follow us on Bluesky @scopeconditions and check out our website, scopeconditionspodcast.com, where you can also find references to all the academic works we discuss. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Now, here’s our conversation with Alice Xu.
Works cited in this episode
Allport, Gordon Willard, Kenneth Clark, and Thomas F. Pettigrew. The nature of prejudice. Vol. 2. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954.
Boustan, Leah Platt. “Was postwar suburbanization ‘white flight’? Evidence from the black migration.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 125, no. 1 (2010): 417–443.
Derenoncourt, Ellora. “Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration.” American Economic Review 112, no. 2 (2022): 369–408.
Habyarimana, James, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner, and Jeremy M. Weinstein. Coethnicity: Diversity and the dilemmas of collective action. Russell Sage Foundation, 2009.
McGhee, Heather. The sum of us: What racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together. One World, 2022.
Milanovic, Branko. Worlds apart: Measuring international and global inequality. Princeton University Press, 20
