For nearly half a century now, inequality in America has been on the rise. The result is an alarming concentration of wealth among the country’s very well-off: The 400 richest Americans own more than the poorest 61 percent—194 million people. Unsurprisingly, this stratification follows the country’s racial cleavages: Just two of the richest 400 people are black, and the 100 richest households own as much as the nation’s entire African American population combined.

Some argue that inequality per se is not inherently problematic. It is possible, after all, to imagine a society in which everyone is doing very well and lives comfortably, while those at the very top are in the stratosphere. Unfortunately, that is not what is going on. Some 47 million people in America are living in poverty.

We reached out to some of the leading scholars of and experts on the economy and labor markets, and asked them what, as the year comes to an end, is giving them cause for hope and despair. Below are their answers, lightly edited for length and clarity.

Shamus Khan, associate professor of sociology at Columbia University

Reason for despair: In 1968 the sociologist Robert Merton coined the phrase “The Matthew Effect,” drawing on a verse in the Gospel of Matthew: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” What makes me despair is how accurate this seems to be: Those who have a lot are getting more and more, and those without much are struggling, and perhaps even losing ground. The great promises of the 20th century—those of racial, gender, and class equality—have been ephemeral. Our schools are more segregated than they were in the ‘80s, the black-white wealth gap is growing, the black-white unemployment gap is what it was in 1963, and the incarceration rate of black men is historically unprecedented. If we look to women we see that they are closing the gender wage gap at a slower and slower rate; in fact, women’s wages have been largely stagnant for over a decade. What economic gains women are making are largely because men’s wages are declining. And finally, while for years worker productivity and wages ran in parallel, we today see that while Americans are more and more productive, they enjoy little to none of the benefits. Their wages are locked in place. The profit of this productivity is going somewhere, of course: to the very rich. The Matthew Effect is in full swing.