COMMENT What should be a higher priority: reducing inequality or alleviating poverty? It is, of course, tempting to answer that they are equally important. Or that the question is moot because reducing poverty will automatically shrink income disparities; or that policies that lower inequality will inevitably reduce poverty.
These answers may be tempting, but they are also wrong. Although China and India’s economic booms have lifted millions out of poverty, they have also led to markedly greater disparities in income. Cuba’s economic inequality is perhaps less severe now than when Fidel Castro took power 47 years ago, but the average Cuban is far poorer today. In the US, poverty has not risen substantially, but the gulf between haves and have-nots is far greater.
