Merit and justice / Amartya Sen -- Equality of opportunity / John E. Roemer -- IQ trends over time: intelligence, race, and meritocracy / James R. Flynn -- Genes, culture, and inequality / Marcus W. Feldman, Sarah P. Otto, and Freddy B. Christiansen -- Schooling, intelligence, and income in...

Biographical note: Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena. Steven N. Durlauf is Kenneth J. Arrow Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Karla...

Most Americans strongly favor equality of opportunity if not outcome, but many are weary of poverty's seeming immunity to public policy. This helps to explain the recent attention paid to cultural and genetic explanations of persistent poverty, including claims that economic inequality is a...

Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic...