If you’ve listened to public radio, tuned in to television news or scrolled through news feeds at any point in the last few years, you may have noted one commonplace term: “uncertainty.”

It’s a key theme in American life right now, whether that has to do with the rising cost of living, the flurry of actions by the Trump administration or even costly natural disasters. All of this adds up to uncertainty, and it has Americans on edge.

In fact, the latest University of Michigan Survey of Consumers finds sentiment down significantly. Alissa Quart, executive director at the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, says pervasive uncertainty can pave the way for deeper inequality. She has a new piece in Time magazine titled “How Insecurity Became the New Inequality.”

She spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: People in, for instance, North Carolina or California out searching for rentals because their house was destroyed in a disaster, they don’t feel less secure; they are — in terrible ways — actually less secure. When policies change with this new presidential administration, some may feel more secure, others less. But you, Alissa, you think insecurity like this leads to inequality, widening the gap between rich and poor.

Alissa Quart: It’s not just a gap between haves and have-nots, but it’s those who can’t absorb the blows of things like the LA fires or the mudslides in Kentucky, and so on and so forth, and middle-class people who can’t keep up with inflation or the tariffs that will raise our prices. So, this is insecurity as much as it is inequality, and they’re inextricably linked.

Brancaccio: I think there’s a lot of logic in this. Insecurity can be seen as like a reverse indicator for well-being, right? You can track insecurity, and when it goes up, it’s not something that you want or that society wants.

Quart: Right. Insecurity has become an indicator that scholars now [use to] assess societal well-being. There’s the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. They talk about “uncertainty shocks” that create economic disorders. So, the example they used was Brexit, so this preceded our current period.

Brancaccio: When the lowest-income people feel insecurity, it is a terrible thing, but part of the point that you’re trying to make is that this — I mean, I don’t ever like the word “precarity” — but this insecurity is being felt not just among the lowest-income people.

Quart: Yeah, it was an abrupt precarity in relation to the pandemic for a lot of the poorer Americans. Remember that we had the American Rescue Plan, expanded child tax credit that reduced child poverty tremendously. Then, you also had this growing middle-class precarity, which I actually have been writing about since 2018. You know, I wrote a book called “Squeezed,” where I called it the “middle precariat.” That’s “middle class” plus “precarious” plus “proletariat.” So, I see this as kind of a form, potentially, of solidarity between people who are upper-middle class, middle class and lower income, this insecurity. And it’s something that was mentioned by Astra Taylor in a great book called “Age of Insecurity,” where she saw that not just as a bane, but a potential way forward, if we could start thinking of ourselves in those terms.