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Studies are largely optimistic about the ability of standardized procedures to constrain decision-makers' biases and produce more equitable results across fields. However, work that embraces standardization as an equalizing force stands in contrast to research on standardization and street-level bureaucrats, which asserts that standardized procedures are not self-actuating and cannot be understood apart from the environments in which they are used. I examine how frontline workers vary in their approach to an actuarial-based tool intended to standardize judgments. In a highly controlled decision-making environment, child welfare workers whose racial and sex characteristics afford them higher status report subverting the tool; conversely, workers in the same position whose ascriptive characteristics yield them lower status in terms of race and sex describe following the rules. In an environment where the same tool is adopted only ceremonially, all workers experience decision-making as unconstrained, regardless of their ascriptive characteristics. This work fills gaps in knowledge about how social status and organizational context intersect to affect rule abidance. Examining these dynamic relationships advances understanding of how organizations reproduce inequality and the limits and potential for standardization to transform social hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the effect of house price declines on voter participation using a novel person-level panel data set. Contrary to what the "angry voter hypothesis" predicts, I find that a 10% decline in local house prices decreases the participation rate of the average mortgaged homeowner by 1.6 percentage points. Consistent with a financial distress channel, house price declines have no effects on renters and particularly severe effects on highly leveraged households. My findings are consistent with the existence of a feedback loop between financial distress and inequality operating through voter participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes some of the major inequalities that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses avenues for policy intervention over the medium and long runs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 84 in-depth interviews and ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the impacts of gentrification and housing shortages in a rural Western U.S. community. In-migration by wealthy outsiders to the high-amenity community has driven up housing costs, privileging newcomers over longtime locals. The paper examines the impacts of social inequality on the community's most vulnerable residents, exploring the ways in which housing insecurity is reproduced and how formal and informal infrastructures fail to provide adequate housing options for low-income residents. While income is a significant factor in determining an individual or family's ability to access stable and affordable housing, symbolic resources, including social and moral capital are also found to play significant roles. The paper describes the mechanisms by which these resources come into play, illustrating how a lack of financial, social, and moral capital disadvantages residents in their struggles to procure housing. It finds that in a rural context where in-migration leads to high inequality, socially marginalized rural residents face a distinctive set of challenges and disadvantages that magnify housing instability and deepen exclusion and precariousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encourages scholars and authors to submit papers on international relations and inequality at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Classic models of urban inequality acknowledge the importance of politics for resource distribution and service provision. Yet, contemporary studies of spatial inequality rarely measure politics directly. In this paper, we introduce political dynasties as a way of integrating political economy approaches with ecological theory to better understand the political construction of urban spatial inequality. To do so, we examine the case of political dynasties within the Chicago city council. We show that, from 2011 to 2018, blocks in dynastic wards saw fewer homicides, assaults, robberies, and thefts relative to those in non-dynastic wards. We then leverage the 2015 ward redistricting to provide evidence that dynastic effects play some role in producing these outcomes: blocks annexed into dynastic wards experienced a decline in assaults and robberies and an increase in pothole coverings. While dynastic politicians improve outcomes for blocks they annex, they also withdraw power from those they displace; and displaced blocks had relatively higher levels of crime than annexed blocks in 2015. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that dynastic politicians are contributing to spatial inequalities within Chicago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broader impacts (BI) policies generate debate on the purpose of science, measuring the impact of research, and is an important topic for the science policy community. However, BI policies often fail to determine if R&D funding helps marginalized communities. This paper introduces a new framework, the Inclusion-Immediacy Criterion, that assesses who benefits from research impacts as divided into three groups: (1) advantaged groups; (2) the general population; and (3) marginalized groups. The study analyzes National Science Foundation (NSF) project outcome reports and finds that advantaged groups are the most likely to benefit from NSF-funded research. The study also shows that certain areas of NSF research, such as Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, more efficiently generate impacts for marginalized groups compared to other directorates. This paper further argues that persistent inequalities in BIs limit the potential of R&D to increase prosperity and well-being, two of NSF's mandated goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit the inequality–growth relationship using an enhanced panel data set with improved inequality data. We explicitly take into account the special role of transition (post-Soviet) countries and add an instrumental variable (IV) estimation to add a causal interpretation to our findings. Our analysis is based on the specification used by Forbes in her 2000 paper, but we also address functional form concerns raised by Banerjee and Duflo three years later. We arrive at three main findings: First, the significant positive association between inequality and economic growth in the full sample is entirely driven by transition countries. Second, this relationship in transition countries is not robust to the inclusion of separate time effects. Lastly, it appears that this association is not causal but rather driven by the particular timing of the transition. Results from IV estimation confirm our interpretation of the observed positive relationship in the overall sample as non-causal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we mobilize newly available historical series from the World Inequality Database to construct world income distribution estimates from 1820 to 2020. We find that the level of global income inequality has always been very large, reflecting the persistence of a highly hierarchical world economic system. Global inequality increased between 1820 and 1910, in the context of the rise of Western dominance and colonial empires, and then stabilized at a very high level between 1910 and 2020. Between 1820 and 1910, both between-countries and within-countries inequality were increasing. In contrast, these two components of global inequality have moved separately between 1910 and 2020: Within-countries inequality dropped in 1910–1980 (while between-countries inequality kept increasing) but rose in 1980–2020 (while between-countries inequality started to decline). As a consequence of these contradictory and compensating evolutions, early 21st century neo-colonial capitalism involves similar levels of inequality as early 20th century colonial capitalism, though it is based on a different set of rules and institutions. We also discuss how alternative rules such as fiscal revenue sharing could lead to a significant drop in global inequality. (JEL: N30, O10, O40) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the recent consultation by the Law Commission of England and Wales ('Law Commission') on reform to the Arbitration Act 1996 ('AA 1996') which grappled with the issue of discrimination in agreements to appoint arbitrators. Recent efforts by the arbitration community to promote greater arbitrator diversity have started to result in the codification of equality and diversity considerations directly into some arbitral rules. However, guidelines developed to date by arbitral institutions have tended to focus on promoting greater diversity in institutional appointments rather than prohibiting discrimination in party appointments. In its September 2022 Consultation Paper, the Law Commission initially proposed new statutory provisions which would have made agreements relating to arbitrators' 'protected characteristics' unenforceable, subject to certain exceptions. This article discusses some areas of uncertainty with these proposals which ultimately led to their abandonment, as well as the Law Commission's conclusion against reforming the AA 1996 to prohibit discrimination in arbitration generally. The article examines some of the alternative ways in which discrimination could have been addressed through statutory reform and whether it is desirable for the onus to fall back to the arbitral institutions to adopt more robust guidance prohibiting discrimination in party appointments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban inequality in South Africa is a formidable problem that is linked to the injustices of its historical apartheid past. This paper identifies sectional titles, a form of property ownership where proprietors wholly own their apartment unit while co-owning the land and common property, as critical to providing more affordable housing. Sectional title schemes mitigate urban inequality by giving a greater proportion of the country the opportunity to own legally secure, well-located dwellings while serving as a platform where communal living could take place. Two suggestions how sectional title legislation can further alleviate aspects of urban inequality are made (1) Permitting a supermajority of sectional owners to terminate a sectional scheme prevents holdout and allows urban land to be redeveloped, providing an increase in housing. (2) Municipalities could consider mandating ethnic integration in sectional schemes to counter the organic formation of mono-racial residential enclaves which remain in present-day South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative importance of racial and class inequality in incarceration in the United States has recently become the subject of much debate. In this paper, we seek to give this debate a stronger empirical foundation. First, we update previous research on racial and class inequality in people's likelihood of being imprisoned. Then, we examine racial and class inequality in people's risk of having a family member imprisoned or living in a high-imprisonment neighborhood. We find that racial inequality in prison admissions has fallen in the twenty-first century, while class inequality has surged. However, in recent years, Black people with high levels of education and income were more likely than white people with low levels of education and income to experience the imprisonment of a family member or to live in a neighborhood with a high imprisonment rate. These seemingly contradictory conclusions can be reconciled by the fact that enduring structures of racial domination have made class boundaries among Black people more permeable than they are among white people. Imprisonment in the United States is increasingly reserved for the poor. But because Black Americans are disproportionately connected to the poor through their families and neighborhoods, racial inequality exceeds class inequality in people's indirect experiences with imprisonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, a trend towards increasing inequality has been detected in both developed and developing countries. Most of these studies have been focusing on formal monetary variables, since capitalism is a socioeconomic system where monetary relations play a paramount role. However, the distribution of non-monetary assets is also very important, especially so in less developed countries. This paper applies a PCA methodology to analyse the distribution of non-monetary wealth in Cuba, a socialist country where the role of monetary relations is relatively minor. Utilizing the MICS-UNICEF 'microdata', the paper provides for the first time an estimation of wealth distribution for three years (2006, 2011, 2014), by area and region. The main results show a non-monotonic wealth inequality reduction. The initial worsening (2006–11) is more than counterbalanced by a recent improvement (2011–14). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some of Paulo Freire's readers understand his pedagogy as a rejection of any and all directive teaching methods, there are many scholars who do recognise Freire's emphasis on teacher directiveness in its appropriate form. In light of this tension between directiveness and dialogue, it seems that students of Freire must inevitably come to a crossroads: is Freire's pedagogy directive or is it not? However, even this question does not get at the more critical dilemma: if Freire's pedagogy is directive, is such directiveness incompatible with Freire's overwhelming emphasis on egalitarian dialogue? This paper establishes three readings of the issue of directiveness in Freire and ultimately provides an exegetical defence of what is termed the compatibilist reading—that directive teaching, properly construed, is compatible with dialogic teaching in Freirean pedagogy. The question this paper seeks to answer is how Freire can have it both ways. In sum, Freire undeniably supports teacher directiveness and philosophically justifies directiveness as compatible with problem‐posing education through his concepts of virtue education, utopia and criticality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overlaps exist between critical Criminology and critical International Political Economy (IPE). However, while criminologists are keen to engage with political economy, there has been less interest in criminology from scholars in IPE. Recently, though, a literature started to emerge within IPE that focusses on discipline, including research which focusses on 'authoritarian neoliberalism' yet without explicitly engaging with the criminological literature. This paper engages with criminological research to demonstrate areas of shared interest, particularly in understanding the role of discipline and consent in the structuring of the 'social ensemble' thereby offering something of a corrective to the literature on 'authoritarian neoliberalism'. We argue that combining insights from Gramscian and (critical) Feminist social theory can help to explain the social reproduction of 'hegemony' in which discipline – including self-discipline – plays an important role. Long-term trends in the fracturing of the hegemonic post-war social ensemble were displaced by temporary 'fixes' related to consumerism, credit and discipline (including in state institutions, changing economic and ideological structures). However, in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 – the limits of these fixes are revealed and social polarisation is the result. In this context, disciplinary processes in and beyond state institutions are becoming more visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental child-related spending represents an important pathway to promote children's human capital development and material well-being. It is also, however, a pathway that perpetuates social inequalities given the well-known socioeconomic divide in parental spending on children. Although several studies have documented the extent to which current family income is associated with spending on children, we still know little about the causal effects of additional income on child-related spending across the socioeconomic strata. In this paper, I examine the effects of income gains due to universal and unconditional cash transfers from the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend on child-related spending. Using longitudinal household expenditure data from the 1996–2015 Consumer Expenditure Surveys, I exploit exogenous variation in the generosity of the Alaska Dividend to estimate short- and long-term disparities in parental expenditures resulting from payouts. Results provide a unique opportunity to compare the behavior of high- and low-income parents after an income boost. I find that low- and middle-income parents use cash transfers to catch up with their more affluent counterparts in the short and long term. Low-income parents are, however, unable to keep up with the long-term increases in child-related spending made by their middle-income counterparts. Implications of results for the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities and for current and proposed cash-transfer policies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how authoritarian leaders employ trade openness as a response to rising inequality. Based on the Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade and models of democratic transition, I argue that unskilled laborers in authoritarian regimes can benefit from engaging in international trade, thus becoming more compliant to the authoritarian rules as their countries integrate into the world economy. Therefore, dictators in labor-abundant countries expand trade to neutralize democratization threats initiated by rising inequality. My argument uses supporting data from around eighty authoritarian regimes during the period from 1963 to 2003. I address endogeneity problems with dynamic panel data and instrumental variable regression models in this paper. My analyses suggest that economic globalization helps strengthen authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author discusses the outcome of oncology patients in the intensive care unit as presented in the paper "ICU and 6-month outcome of oncology patients in the intensive care unit." published within this issue. He says that earlier the idea of admitting a patient with malignant disease to intensive care unit was considered absurd. He discusses the need for goal of equality of care and feels the right and need for all oncology patients to be treated in a similar fashion.

The article discusses the papers in a special issue of the journal "Social Politics" which addresses issues concerning social inequality. A paper by Joan Acker explores the retheorization using feminist insights about gender, class and race relations. A paper by Walter Korpi combines gender and class in analyzing patterns of inequalities in different types of welfare states. Korpi presents three gender policy models: general family support, dual-earner support and market-oriented policies.

The article discusses various papers presented during the Symposium on Poverty and Inequality in China which are published within the issue, including one on rural income volatility and inequality in China, another on the role of power in inequality in the country, as well as a paper on the factors behind the rising wage inequalities in China.

The basic story of global inequality in the last three decades has been an overall decline, but one which is composed of quite intricate patterns. There has been a decline in between-country inequality as China and India have grown relative to the US and other rich countries. This has been accompanied by an increase in within-country inequality, but this is itself composed of rising inequality in some countries such as China, India, and the US, and declining inequality in other countries, including large economies in Latin America. Section II of the paper reviews these patterns, highlighting country diversity to make the central point that policy matters. Section III addresses a normative question—what relative weight should be given to within-country and between-country inequality in making an overall global assessment? This section brings on board recent philosophical discourse, including on inequality of opportunity in a global frame. Section IV returns to the 'policy matters' theme and takes up global constraints on national redistribution policy in a globalized world: for example, a race to the bottom on taxation to attract and keep capital and talent, and possible global institutional responses to alleviate these constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bologna, Italy, with its history of good governance, progressive welfare policies, community work, and participation has engendered powerful discourses informing policy and institutional innovation. Yet, a recent city-wide mixed-method action-research (AR) project, designed to document and tackle health inequalities, showed a significant North–South divide for a range of health indicators and an unequal distribution of social determinants of health across the most socio-economically deprived city areas. The AR project also examined the potential of the city's initiatives for community development and health promotion in addressing health inequalities. In this paper, we focus on a recent institutional innovation called 'Uffici reti e lavoro di comunità' (Network and community work units, NCWUs), established by the Bologna municipality in 2016 to promote the decentralization of powers, strengthen community networks, and foster the engagement of citizen organizations in taking care of the material and social living environment. The results of the AR project indicate that the NCWUs, whilst not designed as a policy initiative to reduce (health) inequalities, have a potential to do so by supporting more effective community action to address the determinants driving those inequalities. Through a critical re-thinking of the concepts of power and participation, they also suggest promising directions to overcome some of the limitations of community development approaches in contributing towards greater well-being and equity for people and communities, underlining local learning which could be applied across different geographies nationally and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the democratic provenance of the law ground a pro tanto duty to obey the law? According to the social-egalitarian argument, it does, because individuals have a pro tanto duty to uphold relations of social equality, and because, by obeying a democratically made law, they uphold relations of social equality. In this paper, I argue, however, that even if we grant the premisses of the argument, the conclusion still does not follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While evidence suggests a durable relationship between redlining and population health, we currently lack an empirical account of how this historical act of racialized violence produced contemporary inequities. In this paper, we use a mediation framework to evaluate how redlining grades influenced later life expectancy and the degree to which contemporary racial disparities in life expectancy between Black working-class neighborhoods and White professional-class neighborhoods can be explained by past Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) mapping. Life expectancy gaps between differently graded tracts are driven by economic isolation and disparate property valuation which developed within these areas in subsequent decades. Still, only a small percent of a total disparity between contemporary Black and White neighborhoods is explained by HOLC grades. We discuss the role of HOLC maps in analyses of structural racism and health, positioning them as only one feature of a larger public–private project conflating race with financial risk. Policy implications include not only targeting resources to formerly redlined neighborhoods but also the larger project of dismantling racist theories of value that are deeply embedded in the political economy of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I estimate the impact of unproductive activities on economic growth, labour productivity and income inequality in the United States from 1947 to 2011. Productive activities directly create value, while unproductive activities do not. I develop a new methodology to compute the growth of productive and unproductive activities in terms of flows of income and stocks of fixed assets using input-output matrices and national income accounts. A core feature of my methodology is the notion that the commodification of knowledge and information gives rise to 'information rents'. Information rents are, as I demonstrate, a determinant factor of growth and distribution. I find that unproductive activities have a net positive effect on economic growth and labour productivity, but at the price of increasing income inequality. Unproductive activities that rely on information rents, in particular, have increased income inequality and slowed down value-added growth despite their positive contribution to labour productivity. Information rents have drawn too much value from productive activities and benefitted the top income earners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing concern that presently dominant frameworks in economics no longer provide a way of adequately addressing and analysing the problems of today's globalising and rapidly changing world. This article makes a number of fundamental proposals about how we might reframe economics to move it towards a clearer focus on human well-being. It develops arguments for a change in the basic ontological proposition and for the need to see 'the economy' as an instituted process of resource allocation. From this viewpoint, economics is then the study of resource allocation decisions and processes and the forces that guide these: from a human perspective it is about understanding who gets what, under what conditions and why? The paper argues that a pluralist approach to understanding the economy is necessary for political, analytical and technical reasons. Drawing on a range of contributions to heterodox economics, the paper argues that if we are to understand current crises and challenges, then our understanding of resource allocation in society must have a broader scope than is present in mainstream economics; it proposes a rethinking of economic agency and provides a critique of rational behaviour that is founded in shifting the emphasis from a narrow conception of welfare to well-being. Acknowledging human well-being as a multidimensional concept, the relationship between the well-being of the person and the collective is reconsidered and the methodological implications for the issue of aggregation are discussed. The article seeks to serve as a point of departure for formulating new research questions, exploring the relationships between human well-being and economic development and analysing economic behaviour and interactions in such a way as to bring us closer to peoples' realities on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the political determinants of inequalities in government interventions under majoritarian (MAJ) and proportional representation (PR) systems. We propose a probabilistic voting model of electoral competition with highly targetable government interventions and heterogeneous localities. We uncover a novel relative electoral sensitivity effect that affects government interventions only under MAJ systems. This effect tends to reduce inequality in government interventions under MAJ systems when districts are composed of sufficiently homogeneous localities. This effect goes against the conventional wisdom that MAJ systems are necessarily more conducive to inequality than PR systems. We illustrate the empirical relevance of our results with numerical simulations on possible reforms of the US Electoral College. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reward system in academic science has changed rapidly in recent years, as many universities especially in Asia and Europe implemented new incentive systems based on research performance. To understand the relationship between inequality in science and the performance-based incentives, this study examined the influence of incentives for publications on not only research performance, but also the distribution of research performance in a Korean university. The findings of this study suggest that using a carefully designed performance incentive system, research organizations may reduce inequality in scientists' research performance while increasing their overall performance. The reduced inequality was due mainly to lower ranking researchers improving their publication performance. Meanwhile, top-ranked researchers responded only to incentives for the quality of publications. We interpret the change in research performance as an outcome of complicated interactions among the structure of incentive systems, scientists' diverse motivations, and their position in the stratification in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Have institutional reforms been successful in reducing persistent gender gaps in economic and political participation? This paper argues that, at the roots of current gender inequalities, there are traditional patriarchal social structures in which power is unequally distributed, with men traditionally holding authority over women. The power imbalance is manifested in governance arrangements, of which we consider discriminatory formal laws and informal normative systems that perpetuate gender inequality. We review the evidence on the effectiveness of reforms addressing gender inequality and applied via formal law changes. Given the possibility of endogeneity issues as reforms may have been adopted in countries where attitudes toward women had already been improving, we focus on micro-empirical studies that tackle this challenge. The evidence suggests that some reforms have been successful in reducing inequalities. Power and norms can shift and sometimes temporary interventions can deliver long-term results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between increasing inequality and recruitment in a civil conflict. Starting from the puzzling observation that the Nepalese conflict escalated after a period of substantial growth and poverty reduction, it hypothesizes that increasing differences in welfare between groups can help explain recruitment by the Maoists. The hypothesis is tested with data from two national-representative household surveys, matched with district-level information regarding mass abductions by the Maoists from newspaper articles. The identification strategy relies on the fact that the months following finalization of the second round of data collection were characterized by a geographical escalation of the conflict. The paper first shows that gains from growth between 1995 and 2003 were much smaller for the (near) landless than for the landed; it then shows that recruiting through abduction of young people was more intensive in districts where inequality between the landed and the landless had previously increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to an article the commented on a paper by the authors that examined how the concept of universalism it applied to the philosophy of education. The authors attempt to clarify certain points of their argument they feel may have been misinterpreted including the assertion that they have fell victim to dichotomous thinking. They discuss the variety of opinions that make up the anti-universalism platform and note that they do agree with some of these critiques. They also note that their paper did not discuss the philosophical foundation of universalism.

In 2000, Robert Putnam forecast that United States (US) democracy was at risk from the twin challenges of declining civic engagement and rising interpersonal inequality. Sixteen years later, his predictions were vindicated by the election of Donald Trump as president of the US. This paper analyses the extent to which the 2016 election of Donald Trump—and his failed re-election bid in 2020—have been related to levels of social capital and interpersonal inequalities. We posit an alternative: that the rise in votes for Trump has been the result of long-term economic and population decline in areas with strong social capital. This hypothesis is confirmed by the econometric analysis conducted for US counties. Long-term declines in employment and population—rather than in earnings, salaries, or wages—in places with relatively strong social capital propelled Donald Trump to the presidency and almost secured his re-election. By contrast, low social capital and high interpersonal inequality were not connected to a surge in support for Trump. These results are robust to the introduction of control variables and different inequality measures. The analysis also shows that the discontent at the base of the Trump margin is not just a consequence of the 2008 crisis but had been brewing for a long time. Places in the US that remained cohesive but witnessed an enduring decline are no longer bowling alone, they have golfed with Trump and will, in all likelihood, continue to golf with Trumpism or other forms of populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the justification of the work of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The idea that moves this text is that, commonly, we study the decisions of the Court trying to determine whether they refer to an activist or self-restrained Court; whether those decisions are liberal, conservative or progressive; but we seldom reflect on the very justification of the Court's task. In this brief paper, I will begin to examine the question, taking into account a particular conception of democracy—which I will call "democracy as conversation among equals." From that standpoint I will derive a certain justification of judicial review—a model of judicial review that would be sensitive to the context and institutional peculiarities of the region—that will help me to critically evaluate the role and mission of the Inter-American Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior inequality literature has mainly focused on the period trends of inequality. This paper advances this literature by adopting a cohort approach to examine the age and cohort patterns of wage inequality. Employing a trajectory-based analytic framework to analyze almost 50 years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I found that the life course patterns of inequality among American men have shifted across cohorts on both aggregate level and microlevel. The cumulative wage advantage associated with higher educational attainment has become more important across cohorts. Wage volatility has increased from earlier to later cohorts and the trend varies by age. The increase in volatility occurred first among mid-career workers and then among early-career workers. Additional analysis suggests that these cohort shifts differ by educational and occupational groups. The findings highlight the value of a cohort and life course approach for studying the process of social stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is a controversial concept, which is used in economics as a generic form of pro-sociality and a simple means to introduce the social context into mainstream approaches. However, the accepted view underestimates social conflict and does not properly characterise social capital as an asset. When considering these issues, a different face of social capital emerges, one that can be associated with closure and privilege maintenance. This paper studies how access to and the extraction of social network resources depend on the social structure. By analysing data from a survey that included a position and a resource generator, we find that for the case of Spanish society, people endowed with high levels of economic and human capital enjoy improved accessibility and networks with a high prevalence of instrumental relations. There is essential inequality in the endowment of social capital, which augments economic inequality. When inequality is socially embedded, traditional redistributive policies may have limited effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to identify the determinants of the increase in income inequality that OECD countries have experienced over the past two decades. My hypothesis is that along with the financialisation of economies that has taken place since 1990, inequality increased because labour flexibility intensified, labour market institutions weakened as trade unions lost power, and public social spending started to retrench and did not compensate for the vulnerabilities created by the globalisation process. Using data from 25 high-income OECD countries from 1990 to 2013, I empirically evaluate this hypothesis. My results clearly suggest that the increase in inequality over the past two decades is caused by an increase in financialisation, a deepening of labour flexibility, the weakening of trade unions and the retrenchment of the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-household inequalities have long been a source of concern for policy design, but there is very little evidence about their effects. The current practice of ignoring inequality within households could lead to an underestimation of both overall inequality and poverty levels, as well as to the misclassification of some individuals with regard to their poverty status. Using a novel survey for Senegal in which consumption data were collected at a disaggregated level, this paper quantifies these various effects. In total, two opposing effects, one on mean and one on inequality, compensate each other in terms of the overall poverty rate, but individual poverty statuses are affected. Intra-household consumption inequalities account for 14 percent of inequality in Senegal. This study has also uncovered the fact that household structure and organization are key correlates of intra-household inequality and individual risk of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lupu and Pontusson (2011) argue that the structure of income inequality, rather than its level, can explain differences in fiscal redistribution across modern welfare states. Contrary to the assertion that there is robust evidence in support of this proposition, the present article challenges the argument that the distributional allegiances between social groups are a function of relative income distances. It makes three central claims: (a) skew in the earnings distribution, the key explanatory variable in the empirical tests of the original paper, can best be understood as an outcome of public policy and labor market institutions, and hence as endogenous to the welfare state; (b) relative earnings differentials are not a valid proxy measure for the structure of income inequality, the concept of theoretical interest; and (c) there is no indication that skew in the distribution of incomes (rather than earnings) is positively associated with fiscal redistribution. In sum, revisiting an influential contribution to the literature offers no support for the proposition that the structure of inequality has consequences for fiscal redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adam Smith has usually been seen as an economist who had a positive view of economic inequalities and who was more concerned with diminishing absolute poverty rather than inequalities. Recently though, Rasmussen (2016 ; 'Adam smith on what is wrong with economic inequality, American Political Science Review , vol. 110, no. 2, 342–52') argued that Smith worried about the effects of extreme inequalities on the morality and happiness of commercial societies. While we do not deny Smith's worries on this front and provide new evidence here, the aim of this paper was to show that Smith cared more about the causes of inequalities than their level per se, or independently of the former. Interestingly, Smith seems to reconcile fairness with economic efficiency in his plea for the system of natural liberty in which inequalities arise from the efforts, talents and risk-taking of individuals and ultimately benefit the least well-off. Moreover, and contrary to what Rasmussen claims, Smith addresses several contemporary issues such as the links between inequalities, economic growth, social mobility and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a model of endogenous partial insurance and we investigate its implications for macroeconomic outcomes, such as wealth inequality, asset accumulation, interest rate, and consumption smoothing. To this end, we include participation costs to state-contingent asset markets into an otherwise standard Aiyagari (1994) model. We highlight the resulting nonmonotonic relationship between wealth and insurance-market participation when insurance is costly. Poor households remain uninsured, middle-class households participate in the insurance market, whereas rich households decide to self-insure by only purchasing risk-free assets. After theoretically characterizing the endogenous partial insurance equilibrium, we quantify its effect, emphasizing the roles of a participation channel and an interest rate channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is focused on the importance of a precise theoretical differentiation between wealth and capital on the one hand, and profits and rents on the other. The work is inspired by our partial agreement with and partial criticism of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. We agree with him that inequalities are growing and we share his view that this is a major threat to the legitimacy of the liberal order both at the national and the international level. At the same time, we are deeply sceptical about his central explanation, namely that excessive growth of profits (r) is the main reason for inequalities which in turn slow growth (g) and generate popular dissatisfaction in the long run. We show that the confusion of profit and rent, capital and wealth, prevents Piketty to prove the r > g formula, because his computed values for r are statistical artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the expansion of higher education (HE) in OECD countries and discusses its economic consequences. For most governments this expansion has been seen as the silver bullet that improves economic growth and helps tackle problems of inequality. However, in most countries increasing numbers of graduates are going into jobs that were once done by non-graduates, raising the concern that the true social returns to HE expansion are low. Because of this it is unsurprising that economists have found it difficult to establish firm links between higher education expansion and economic growth. At the same time, in some countries, HE expansion has exacerbated problems of economic and social inequality. The paper argues that governments need to take a more realistic view of the role of HE, consider alternative ways of preparing people for the labour market, and at the same time explore more rigorously exactly how the sector is conducting itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Economic Forum ( WEF) is a global governance actor that has in recent years taken an increased interest in issues pertaining to gender equality and women's empowerment. The paper critically investigates the work of the WEF in this area, suggesting that WEF-produced gender and development discourse is profoundly compatible with the politics and practices of neoliberalism-not least in the way in which it aligns gender equality and women's empowerment with national economic competitiveness. This is, furthermore, a distinctly postfeminist reading of gender that rests upon the production of neoliberal-compatible female subjectivities-such as 'rational economic woman' or 'Davos woman'-who emerge as those in society best able to deliver fair and sustainable economic growth (effectively rescuing global capitalism from the excesses of hypermasculine crisis capitalism). The framing of the case for gender equality and women's empowerment in these terms is powerful and may well be an effective way for gender advocates to present their demands. But by analyzing not only how the WEF has framed/represented gender issues but also what has been left out of this representation, the paper points to the way in which simplistic representations concerning the contribution that women make to economic competitiveness disguise the double burdens and gendered structures of socioeconomic inequality that are central to the widening and deepening of the market into all spheres of social life under conditions of roll-back neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the different meanings of the concept of social cohesion, within the framework of sociology and of public policies related to strategies for development. The aim is to explore the relationship between social cohesion and the decrease in inequity and social inequality on one hand, and the role of knowledge in those strategies on the other, aiming to find alternative models for social development. The meaning of concepts parallel to that of social cohesion in the sociological literature, such as social capital, organized collective action and social networks, is reviewed. The paper systematizes the arguments of international organizations about social cohesion, in particular the approaches of the Economic Commission for Latin America. Finally, some arguments are built on the relationship between knowledge, social cohesion and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasingly sophisticated antidiscrimination laws, discrimination and inequality have proved remarkably resilient. This prompts questions about the limits of law's ability to achieve social change. One way forward is to fashion new legal tools, which impose duties to promote or achieve equality, rather than focusing on individual rights against specific perpetrators. In the past decade in Britain, such fourth generation equality laws have been developed in a distinctive format, requiring the decision-maker to "have due regard" to equality, rather than taking action to achieve such objectives. This standard has triggered a spate of judicial review cases, particularly in response to austerity measures imposing deep budgetary cuts on disadvantaged groups. This Paper's aims are two-fold. The first is to examine the judicial approach to the due regard standard in the light of recent regulatory theory. Do courts consider the due regard standard as a signal for deference, or can it be understood as an example of "reflexive law," facilitating deliberative decision-making rather than imposing external standards likely to meet with resistance from the regulated body? The Paper concludes that courts have struggled to deal with the regulatory challenges presented by the "due regard" standard, wavering between appropriate and inappropriate intervention. The second aim is an analysis of whether a deliberative standard is appropriate in the equality context. The record of judicial review cases demonstrates that such a standard risks legitimating or simply reconfiguring existing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original logic underlying the World Bank's structural adjustment policies in Africa was that the removal of state-created distortions would not only improve efficiency in the operation of markets but also enhance income equality and reduce poverty. The paper explores the linkage between adjustment and the deteriorating income distribution and rising poverty in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on the rural sector where most of the population earns its livelihoods. The pattern observed is a logical outcome of the strategies embedded in World Bank policies that need to change if we are to counter the persistence of inequality and poverty on the continent. The paper outlines an alternative approach aimed at increasing rural incomes to reduce poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies that shift the costs of higher education from the taxpayer to the university student or graduate are increasingly popular, yet they have not been subjected to a thorough normative analysis. This paper provides a critical survey of the standard arguments that have been used in the public debate on higher education funding. These arguments are found to be wanting. In their place, the paper offers a more systematic approach for dealing with the normative issues raised by the funding of higher education. This approach is drawn from the political theory of John Rawls, whose view seeks to reconcile the values of equality, efficiency, and liberty. I show that, contrary to what we may think at first, an egalitarian approach like Rawls' does not in principle rule out policies that shift the funding burden from taxpayers to students or graduates. Which funding policy that approach selects as most fair will instead depend on the likely impact on the lifetime income prospects of the worst-off group in society, and this is a question which will need to be settled by empirical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on lived experiences of De-notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribe (DNT) population groups with a focus on the challenges faced in efforts towards collectivizing these diverse identities into a 'community'. In this participatory action research process, people were involved throughout; including in finalizing research objectives and defining a set of indicators for the data collection process. The data were analysed through a Ground-Level Panel—a collective analysis process using in-depth discussion and participatory tools. The process aimed to test out a model for participatory monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals, which would in turn strengthen 'social accountability' systems for those most marginalized and facing multiple inequalities. Throughout the research it became central to understand the kind of challenges that arise from building a collective identity. It was found that so-called communities are often diverse 'within' not only in terms of marginalization but also in terms of ideologies; this hinders any strategic engagement in collectivizing under a common banner. These fissures within the communities and under-representation in positions of power, further deny DNTs equitable opportunities to access entitlements, which reproduces the vicious cycle of marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Describing the dynamics of patient mortality hazard is a major concern for cancer epidemiologists. In addition to time and age, other continuous covariates have often to be included in the model. For example, survival trend analyses and socio‐economic studies deal respectively with the year of diagnosis and a deprivation index. Taking advantage of a recent theoretical framework for general smooth models, the paper proposes a penalized approach to hazard and excess hazard models in time‐to‐event analyses. The baseline hazard and the functional forms of the covariates were specified by using penalized natural cubic regression splines with associated quadratic penalties. Interactions between continuous covariates and time‐dependent effects were dealt with by forming a tensor product smooth. The smoothing parameters were estimated by optimizing either the Laplace approximate marginal likelihood criterion or the likelihood cross‐validation criterion. The regression parameters were estimated by direct maximization of the penalized likelihood of the survival model, which avoids data augmentation and the Poisson likelihood approach. The implementation proposed was evaluated on simulations and applied to real data. It was found to be numerically stable, efficient and useful for choosing the appropriate degree of complexity in overall survival and net survival contexts; moreover, it simplified the model building process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality is important, both for its own sake and for its political, social, and economic implications. However, measuring inequality is not straightforward, as it requires decisions to be made on the variable, population, and distributional characteristics of interest. These decisions will naturally influence the conclusions that are drawn so they must be closely linked to an underlying purpose, which is ultimately defined by a social welfare function. This paper outlines important considerations when making each of these decisions, before surveying recent advances in measuring inequality and suggesting avenues for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]