WASHINGTON  The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said in an interview broadcast on Sunday evening that rising inequality was eroding social cohesion and that Congress could help economic growth by making the tax code more efficient.

The statements, in an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS, were a rare foray outside the strict boundaries of the Fed’s mandate, to which Mr. Bernanke has typically confined his remarks.

In the interview, which was taped last week during a visit to the Ohio State University, Mr. Bernanke was unusually blunt in defending the Fed’s decision last month to inject $600 billion into the banking system to jolt the flagging recovery.

“This fear of inflation, I think, is way overstated,” Mr. Bernanke said. “We’ve looked at it very, very carefully. We’ve analyzed it every which way.”