Keith Payne is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an international leader in the psychology of inequality and discrimination. His research has been featured in The Atlantic and The New York Times, and on NPR, and he has written for Scientific American and Psychology Today.
"A persuasive and highly readable account of how rising inequality,
and not just absolute poverty, is undermining our politics, social
cohesion, long term prosperity, and general well-being."
—President Barack Obama
“Brilliant. . . . an important, fascinating read arguing that
inequality creates a public health crisis in America. . . . Payne
challenges a common perception that the real problem isn’t
inequality but poverty, and he’s persuasive that societies are
shaped not just by disadvantage at the bottom but also by
inequality across the spectrum. . . . So much of the national
conversation now is focused on President Trump, for understandable
reasons. But I suspect that he is a symptom as well as a cause, and
that to uncover the root of our national dysfunctions we must go
deeper than politics, deeper than poverty, deeper than demagoguery,
and confront the inequality that is America today.”
—Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
“Authoritative, thought provoking, accessible and well worth a spot
on your summer reading list. . . . Payne embraces the egalitarian
view that inequality of income is problem in and of
itself—economically, morally, politically. . . . Demonstrate[s] how
much more interesting and enlightening the inequality debate has
become since those early days when it was mostly labor economists
debating how much inequality had increased and whether we should
blame technology or trade. . . . While we have come to understand
that a society can suffer from having either too much inequality or
too little, the challenge now is identifying and getting to that
sweet spot in between.”
—Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post
“Keith Payne is intent on showing how the problem of inequality
operates within the human mind. . . . Beyond its case studies, the
memoir portion of Payne’s book is compelling in its own way, and is
a counternarrative to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. The
Broken Ladder is a liberal man’s view of his own rise. . . .
Payne’s book will make its readers pause to consider the human
condition in more depth.”
—Nancy Isenberg, The American Scholar
“Drawing on experimental psychology, Payne argues that the amount
of money you have is not the main determinant of well-being; what
matters is how you feel about it. The problem of inequality is
relational, not economic. Poverty unquestionably harms health,
encourages bad decisions and creates instability. But the key
message of Payne’s book is that people who are not deprived may act
as if they are—because they feel relatively poor.”
—Aaron Reeves, Nature
“An important and disturbing book to tell us how inequality is
affecting Americans psychologically. . . . Payne, who grew up poor
in Kentucky hill country, felt the injuries of class as a child. .
. . As an adult, he is helping to create a new ‘science of
inequality,’ by studying such subjects as the connection between
social status and stress . . . and income inequality and life
expectancy. . . . It is sobering stuff, and it should make us think
about the hidden costs of growing income inequality—and about the
messages society is sending to people about where they fit in.”
—The National Book Review
“Relying on dozens of experimental studies, which he describes in
vivid and graspable narratives, Payne shows that even in a
generally wealthy society, feeling poor relative to your neighbors
will harm your health, impair your ability to make long-term plans,
push you toward conspiracy theories and ultimately cause you to die
sooner than you otherwise would. On measures of well-being,
residents of the United States fare worse than residents of
countries like Canada, Sweden or Japan, all of which are less
wealthy but more equal. . . . Payne wants us to start ‘building a
flatter ladder’ between rich and poor and ‘get better at living
amid its rungs.’”
—America Magazine
“Payne’s writing on how inequality changes people’s decisions,
beliefs, and even their health is eye-opening and efficient. . .
. The Broken Ladder is a clear and useful book about the
gap between the society we have and a society we want. It’s an
important step toward understanding how these complicated issues
affect our country—alongside books like Matthew
Desmond’s Evicted, which takes a more narrative approach to
the issue, and Per Molander’s The Anatomy of Inequality, which
analyzes it from an economic point of view. Inequality can seem
intractable, but these writers are steering us in the right
direction. It is no doubt difficult to situate the problem of
inequality in such a fraught political landscape, with a President
so intent on hurting so many, but keeping an eye on a long-term
vision of a more egalitarian society is necessary, too. Keeping
Payne’s book on your bedside table is a good place to start.”
—Bradley Babendir, The Rumpus
“Inequality is like gravity in that it is a weighty and pervasive
unseen force in daily life. . . . Payne makes a compelling case
here for the invisible hand of inequality as a major factor in
life—with predictable effects on life expectancy and social
behavior—and an influence on political leanings. . . . [A]n
engaging interdisciplinary blend of psychology, sociology, and
economics that will also appeal to avid readers of politics.”
—Booklist
“In a wide-ranging exploration of how we view ourselves in relation
to others, Payne shows that ‘the social comparisons we make can
alter how we see the world.’ . . . Smartly blending personal
observations with recent research in psychology and neuroscience
(his own and that of others), he details how our perceived relative
position in the scheme of things plays a ‘critical role’ in shaping
our biases, habits, and ideas. . . . In revealing vignettes, Payne
describes how feelings of inequality help account for our political
choices, unhealthy behaviors, racial prejudices, and tendency to
seek meaningful patterns. . . . [Payne] provides valuable
psychological insights into our daily behaviors.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The Broken Ladder advances a timely examination by a leading
social scientist of the physical, psychological, and moral effects
of inequality and the measures that people can take to lessen the
harm done by inequality in their own lives.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Keith Payne has written an eye-opening book with profound
resonance for the state of our world. We all know that income
inequality has dire economic and societal consequences,
but The Broken Ladder shows that it has deep
psychological impact too, affecting our decision-making, our mood
and our health. A thoughtful look — and a rallying cry — into the
way our environment shapes us all.”
—Susan Cain, co-founder of Quiet Revolution and New York Times
bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a
World That Can’t Stop Talking
“The Broken Ladder’s examination of the consequences of
inequality—of what it is like to be poor and to feel poor—is as
profound as it is revelatory. Keith Payne is a lovely, graceful
writer. Replete with gems of research studies, insights, and
illuminating examples and implications, this book will change the
way you think about your world.”
—Sonja Lyubomirsky , Ph.D., professor of psychology at the
University of California, Riverside and author of The How of
Happiness
“The Broken Ladder is an important, timely, and beautifully written
account of how inequality affects us all. Though it surely plagues
the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, Keith Payne
expertly and engagingly shows that it also touches the wealthy and
privileged. Payne marshals the cutting edge in psychology and
neuroscience research to explain how inequality influences our
political and religious beliefs, how we perform at work, and how we
respond to stress and physical threats—and how we can combat its
most insidious effects on our lives.”
—Adam Alter, Associate Professor of Marketing at New York
University’s Stern School Business, and New York Times Bestselling
author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink
“Many books have been written on the effects of inequality on the
economy. In The Broken Ladder, Keith Payne sheds fascinating
insight into the pernicious effects of inequality on another
complex system: human psychology.”
—Michael Norton, co-author, Happy Money: The Science of Happier
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