Wealth Inequality

Abstract

This entry focuses on the normative significance of wealth inequality. The emphasis is mainly on background descriptive considerations about how to understand wealth and measure its distribution in ways that contrast with other significant distributions (principally income). Attention is then given to a variety of philosophical diagnoses of why wealth inequality might be a distinctively or especially concerning kind of inequality from the point of view of justice. Some discussion is then offered of the questions faced by proposals to increase the taxation of wealth, particularly of the largest fortunes.