Reese: How has this happened?

Putnam: This is a complicated problem that’s taken decades to develop; it’s kind of a perfect storm. There are a lot of things that’ve contributed to these growing gaps. Income inequality has been growing rapidly since the 70s. Initially, it was growing because the bottom was falling away from everybody else, and then in the 80s and 90s, the gap continued to widen because the top was pulling away from the middle and bottom. In this century, the very top has been pulling away from everybody.

The American working class has not had a real raise in 30 or 40 years. For a while, in terms of the individual family, that was offset by the fact that women were going to work, so even though men’s wages were stagnating and declining, the family income was held up by women. But then, in the lower-half of the income distribution, marriage itself began to fall apart—so the pooling of income that kept families afloat disappeared.

Reese: You write about how income inequality, and opportunity inequality, can be seen in America’s neighborhoods. How is this happening?

Putnam: They’re increasingly segregated by social class. Rich folks mostly live amongst rich folks and poor folks among poor folks. That’s not true for racial or religious segregation—we’ve become a more integrated society in those ways. We’re also less likely to go to school [with] or marry people from a different class background.

Reese: How does neighborhood segregation affect schooling?

Putnam: More and more rich kids are going to school with other rich kids. The environments in which rich and poor kids are being taught are very different. It’s not something schools have done, but the schools are where you can see this gap. The same thing is true with respect to all the community and mentoring relationships that are important to kids growing up—and were important a generation ago. It’s not just the parents of a child who helps them; it’s coaches and clergy people and neighbors and so on, all of whom are giving a hand to kids from poor backgrounds.

Reese: You’ve been studying class issues for years. Why is social class such an important issue to you?

Putnam: I grew up in a town that felt egalitarian, with lots of what I would learn later on was called "social capital." After I left, I thought I might be seeing things through rose-colored glasses—that I might be wrong about how egalitarian it was. But when we completed the survey of all of my surviving classmates, it turned out that [my original assumption] was basically true—it was a pretty equal place with a lot of community and family support. And when my team went back to Port Clinton for this research, we were shocked beyond belief by what had happened to this little town—how much inequality we saw, in terms of chances for success. It is much harder now to "make it" if you come from a lower-class background. This turned out to be a reflection of what’s happened nationwide. This one little town in middle America encapsulates trends that are happening everywhere, not just tiny towns hit by deindustrialization.