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This book was prompted by a seemingly simple question, asked by many other scholars and commentators before me. Why do some people have sufficient personal wealth and enjoy a high level of economic security, while others experience extreme financial insecurity and lack an economic cushion to fall back on in times of crisis? In other words, the book studies wealth mobility and inequality. It explores the extent to which cumulative advantages and disadvantages over the life course and across generations shape the accumulation and distribution of personal wealth.

The geographical scope of the book is limited: the evidence presented in the book relies almost exclusively on research conducted in rich countries, where personal wealth is concentrated and research has been more prolific, and there is a particular focus on the US, other English-speaking countries, and Western European countries. I hope that this book will encourage data collection and research on wealth in a wider range of countries.

Understanding wealth patterns provides a new perspective on socioeconomic well-being and financial security, one not captured by more commonly used measures of socioeconomic status such as occupational status and earnings. Yet personal wealth also plays an important role in some of the most important decisions that people make over the life course. Examples of such decisions are the neighborhoods people live in, the schools they attend, the type of work they do, the friendships they form, the people they date, cohabit with, or marry, and the way they spend their leisure time. Conversations with students and colleagues revealed how important and relevant the topic of this book was to people of diverse social, demographic, and economic backgrounds. Indeed, many people I spoke with expressed strong views about wealth, inequality, and the many other related topics covered in the book, for example the role of inheritance as a vehicle for social mobility, the reasons why the wealth gap varies across social groups, the social consequences of the extreme concentration of wealth at the top, the economic benefits of higher education, and the detrimental consequences of student debt for wealth mobility among young adults.

The book draws on theoretically driven texts and empirically based evidence from hundreds of studies conducted by social scientists. Some of the arguments and insights I share in this book are based on material published in my previous book, Transmitting Inequality (2008), and I am grateful to the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group for permission to use this material. The present book has three main aims: to review and assess what social scientists know about personal wealth; to provide a balanced overview of the academic literature in the field and of the current state of research on wealth; and to identify areas for further research. Like many other books that cover a large and rapidly evolving body of literature and a diversity of approaches, Wealth provides new answers to “old” questions, and also raises new questions on the topic. In the Appendix, I put forward some of these questions for further discussion, as a way for readers to contemplate the issues at stake and further develop their own views on the increasing importance of wealth and socioeconomic disparities in the new wealth landscape.

I am grateful to the many students who have taken classes with me over the years for their engagement, during and after class, in conversations that contributed to this book. Special thanks go to Macey Downs and Najwa Jamal, who read excerpts of the manuscript and commented on the clarity of arguments. I am grateful to my colleagues at Bard College—in particular to Sanjaya DeSilva, Laura Ford, Tamar Khitarishvili, Kijong Kim, Aniruddha Mitra, Joel Perlmann, and Pavlina Tcherneva—for suggesting relevant readings and providing valuable and constructive criticism on excerpts from earlier drafts. This book has greatly benefited from the excellent comments and editorial services provided by Daniela Franca Joffe. I am grateful to the whole Polity Press team for its professionalism and accessibility, and especially Jonathan Skerrett, for believing in the project and supporting it at every turn, and to Karina Jákupsdóttir and Manuela Tecusan, for helping at all the stages of the publication process and for improving the manuscript.

I dedicate this book to my family, near and far.