Can Cities Fight Inequality?

We invite you to join the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute and the UCI School of Social Science to an evening lecture by visiting professor, Jacob L. Vigdor.

The political will to pursue redistributive economic policies is geographically concentrated. Recent years have seen local governments pass laws imposing new worker protections, higher minimum wages, regulations promoting the construction of lower-cost housing, and most recently taxes on high executive compensation. The traditional concern with local redistribution has been sustainability: when cities tax the rich to support the poor, the rich have the option to move to the suburbs.

This narrative has been applied to mid-century American cities. As cities become wealthier and the poor suburbanize, new concerns arise: cities appear to be adopting pro-poor policies only after most of the poor have been priced out of them, and the means of fighting inequality have been privatized -- compared to government-funded income support, a high minimum wage is worthless for those who cannot find work. This lecture will consider the prospects of this new urban agenda.

Jacob Vigdor is the Daniel J. Evans Professor of Public Policy and Government at the University of Washington. He is also a research affiliate at UC Irvine's Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute. He is in the midst of a study at the University of Washington that examines the impact of the Seattle Minimum Wage ordinance on labor market outcomes.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Lecture 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Social & Behavioral Science Gateway,
Room 1517
(bldg 214 on campus map)

RSVP

RSVP online. For further information,
please contact Dan Paley,
dpaley@uci.edu or 949.824.5320.