“The drift of disproportionate asset holdings toward the pinnacles of wealth carries a society away from meritocracy, productivity, empathy, and mobility. Carried far enough, skewness in wealth distribution can undermine social cohesion and our democratic ideals.”
— JAMES M. STONE
Programs on
Wealth Inequality
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation has made a significant investment in the study of wealth inequality, with emphasis on the causes and consequences of increasing accumulation at the top of the wealth distribution.
The Foundation has funded wealth inequality projects at thirteen institutions: Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Harvard Kennedy School, Brown University, INSEAD, MIT, UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, University College London, University of Michigan, UBC’s Vancouver School of Economics, Paris School of Economics, University of Munich, and University of Hong Kong.
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Policy
at the Harvard Kennedy School
The Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics (CID)
at The University of Michigan
Stone Centre on Wealth and Income Inequality at UBC’s Vancouver School of Economics
To earn a substantial fortune requires some measure of talent, plenty of hard work, and a whole lot of luck. To give it away well is at least as difficult.
Many a painstakingly-built fortune has been dissipated ineffectively in the giving phase or directed posthumously toward purposes the builder of the wealth would never have favored. To avoid these hazards, and having already provided economic security for our children, my wife Cathy and I are bequeathing upon death virtually the entirety of the family estate to the support of just two philanthropic causes. Our tightly-defined focus is in line with our joint determination that, in order to maximize the rather limited influence we can exert from our graves, we should reject the path most commonly taken by fortunate people, which is the establishment of a foundation with wide subject matter discretion and a long life. Our plan, to the contrary, is designed not only to constrain our post-mortem giving narrowly by subject matter but also to direct that the funds be disbursed and put to work quickly. Read the full essay
Centers on Wealth Inequality Reports
The Foundation has funded wealth inequality projects at thirteen institutions: Brown University; Graduate Center of the City University of New York; Harvard Kennedy School; INSEAD; Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Paris School of Economics; University College London; University of British Columbia, Vancouver School of Economics; University of California, Berkeley; University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy; University of Hong Kong; and University of Michigan.