With a timely new foreword by Robert Frank, this groundbreaking book explores the very meaning of happiness and prosperity in America today. Although middle-income families don’t earn much more than they did several decades ago, they are buying bigger cars, houses, and appliances. To pay for them, they spend more than they earn and carry record levels of debt. Robert Frank explains how increased concentrations of income and wealth at the top of the economic pyramid have set off ‘expenditure cascades’ that raise the cost of achieving many basic goals for the middle class. Writing in lively prose for a general audience, Frank employs up-to-date economic data and examples drawn from everyday life to shed light on reigning models of consumer behavior. He also suggests reforms that could mitigate the costs of inequality.
Falling Behind compels us to rethink how and why we live our economic lives the way we do.
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Preface to the 2013 Edition
Preface to the 2007 Edition
1. Introduction
2. Recent Changes in Income and Wealth Inequality
3. Inequality, Happiness, and Health
4. Envy or Context?
5. The Rising Cost of Adequate
6. Why Do We Care about Rank?
7. What Types of Consumption Are Most Sensitive to Context?
8. How Can Middle-Class Families Afford to Keep Up?
9. Smart for One, Dumb for All
10. Looking Ahead
11. Lessons for Public Policy
12. Reflections
Notes
References
Index
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Robert H. Frank is an economics professor in the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, and a columnist for The New York Times. His books include The Winner Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), Luxury Fever, Choosing the Right Pond, Passions Within Reason, and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke).
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