ARCHITECTURE

1.2 Narrating Inequality
Inequality is more than the series of interconnected
facts laid out in the previous section;
it is a discourse, for which housing is a
central term. This discourse is of a dual nature:
numeric and narrative. Here we summarize
some of the key paths the discourse
on inequality has taken—focusing on a short
but telling governmental history of “middle-class
economics” in the United States—
and place them in relationship with other,
seemingly unrelated facts to show how this
discourse works.
1.2.1 Producing Data
Whether the facts collected and used in this
discourse are quantitative or qualitative depends partly
on who is measuring. Not surprisingly, different kinds
of facts—here largely in the form of data sets—can be put
to different kinds of uses. While private, for-profit organizations
are more likely to collect and evaluate data as
it relates to purchasing power and consumption habits,
data are collected by governmental or non-governmental
entities in order to define and legitimate policy options.
For example, the Gini Coefficient—which ranges from 0
for a country where all citizens have identical incomes to
1 where all income goes to a single individual—is an important
international comparative measure of inequality
in this respect. 1 Certain trends however, described below,
are pushing this type of data collection from long-established
quantitative metrics into a more qualitative direction,
with potential implications for the discourse on inequality,
both nationally and internationally.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), an organization of leading industrialized
nations known for measuring the gross domestic
product (GDP), has recently added to its otherwise
quantitative analysis of “income inequality and poverty”
the more subjective layer of “well-being.” 2 On the occasion
of its fiftieth anniversary in 2011, the organization
released a compendium of eight new indicators focused
on this self-reported state of mind, all to further its mission
of supporting not only economic growth, but “better
policies for better lives.” 3 In the United States, the Social
Science Research Council has also taken up this search for
alternative measures to the GDP. Its “Measure of America”
initiative, launched in 2006, measures inequalities by
congressional district, and focuses on three main indicators
of the United Nations’ Human Development Index. 4
It combines indicators of health, education, and standard
of living into a single number between 0 and 10. Health is
measured by life expectancy at birth; education by level of
education; and standard of living by median income.
In contrast to the OECD, the World Bank—one of
the main international organizations focused primarily on
funding long-term development projects in high-poverty
countries—has traditionally opted for a more straightforward
approach. Its measure of poverty is not relational but
absolute, premised on purchasing power parity: extreme
poverty is defined as living with $1.25 a day or less, moderate
poverty at $2 a day. 5 Since 2013, however, the World Bank’s
goal has also been framed in less absolute terms. The heading
“Inequality and Shared Prosperity” has dominated its publications
since the Bank launched its “Shared Prosperity Indicator”
to measure income growth at the bottom 40 percent in
each country, and its “Visualize Inequality” program to focus
on childrens’ “inequality of opportunity” [See HH: 2009]. 6
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