Rethinking Inequality:
Leveraging Psychological Science to Advance Economic Justice

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In the United States and around the world, economic inequality is among the defining issues of our time. In 2025, 1 percent of U.S. households controlled nearly one-third of all wealth while half of the country struggled for less than 3 percent. Such disparity is socially corrosive and unlikely to be democratically or economically sustainable.

Rethinking Inequality: Using Psychological Science to Advance Economic Justice brings together psychologists from academia, health care, and government to examine the effects of inequality and offer real-world policy solutions. Across seven policy papers, psychological science is applied to understand the many manifestations of poverty and economic inequality—from the precarity of low-wage work, to housing insecurity and the threat of homelessness, to the power dynamics that pervade the legal system.

Introduction

Understanding and reducing inequality requires psychological science
Sam Abbott, M.P.P. and Heather E. Bullock, Ph.D.

Section 1: Achieving Economic Stability

From scarcity to security: Why guaranteed income is a psychological and policy imperative
Harmony A. Reppond, Ph.D. and Emily Hentschke, Ph.D.
APA Division 9: Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

Minimum wage crisis: Reconnecting wages to productivity
Klaus E. Cavalhieri, Ph.D., Kipp Pietrantonio, Ph.D., Jeremy J. Coleman, Ph.D., and Cindy Juntunen, Ph.D.
Psychology of Social Class Organization

Section 2: Equity-Focused Interventions

Financial exploitation and abuse of older Americans: A call to action
Walter R. Boot, Ph.D., Marguerite DeLiema, Ph.D., and Shinae L. Choi, Ph.D.
APA Division 20: Division on Adult Development and Aging

Meeting the developmental needs of young children experiencing homelessness
Alyssa R. Palmer, Ph.D., Janette E. Herbers, Ph.D., and J. J. Cutuli, Ph.D.
APA Division 37: The Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice

Housing justice for women who experience serious mental illness
Erika Carr, Ph.D., Lauren Mizock, Ph.D., Alexis Jones, Ph.D., and Shykina Brown, Psy.D.
APA Division 35: Society for the Psychology of Women

Section 3: Legal and Economic Justice

When legal help is health care: Medical-legal partnerships as a tool for health equity and cost savings
Shannon Perkins, Ph.D. and Sianne Alexis, M.A.
APA Division 38, Society for Health Psychology

Ending the criminalization of poverty in the United States
Jen T. Perillo, Ph.D. and Sara C. Appleby, Ph.D.
APA Division 41, American Psychology-Law Society

Rethinking Inequality: Leveraging Psychological Science to Advance Economic Justice is a collaboration of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Division on Adult Development and Aging, the Society for the Psychology of Women, the Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice, the Society for Health Psychology, the American Psychology-Law Society, and the Psychology of Social Class Organization, with funding from the American Psychological Association (APA) Committee on Division/APA Relations (CODAPAR).

Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this volume are those of the individual contributors and do not reflect the views of the participating organizations, the American Psychological Association, or any of their divisions or subunits.