International Inequalities Institute

Vacancy - Academic Director role for the Atlantic Fellows programme

We are looking to appoint the new Academic Director to lead the Atlantic Fellows programme. This is an outstanding opportunity for a senior public figure or academic to lead what is expected to become the world leading Fellowship programme devoted to tackling inequalities. 

The Atlantic Fellows programme will host 600 Fellows over the next 20 years, starting in summer 2017. These Atlantic Fellows will all be committed to addressing inequalities, with a particular concern to share experiences from different parts of the world, especially the global south. The Academic Director will work closely with the Deputy Director, allowing the Academic Director to lead on the strategic vision, networking, research and engagement activities which will be vital for the success of the Atlantic Fellow's programme. We anticipate this post will appeal to either a senior academic with a leading research profile and a public presence on inequality issues or to public figures, professionals and campaigners with a proven record of activism and leadership who have the capacity to direct this Fellowship Programme at LSE.

More information can be found on the Atlantic Fellows programme page. 

Winner of the Popular Prize / LSE Research Festival 2016

Celestin Okoroji, associated with the III through the Leverhulme Trust Programme, was awarded the Popular Prize at the LSE Research Festival 2016 for his poster 'The Nadir of British Life: social representations of the unemployed'. The prize was voted for by Research Festival attendees and presented by Professor Mary Morgan. Celestin is currently codnucting doctoral research into the relationship between the UK social representation of unemployed benefit claimants and its impact on their social identity and ability to find work.

Winners of the Booth Prize / LSE Research Festival 2016

This year's Research Festival was themed on poverty and inequality, to commemorate the centenary death of pioneering social scientist Charles Booth. Judged by Professor Nicola Lacey and Christopher Stephen, great-grandson of Charles Booth, the winners of the Booth Prize were BSc/BA students Tatiana Pazem, Sofia Lesur Kastelein, Sally Park, Robert Clark and Xinyang Li. Their headlined abstract was titled "Hipsters and Spikes: mapping gentrification and defensive architecture in Tower Hamlets". The judges felt that this work touched closely on both themes and methods featured in Charles Booth's pioneering work, combining state of the art mapping techniques with qualitative research to enhance our understanding of how inequality is produced in urban contexts.

Working Paper 7: Gendering the elites: an ethnographic approach to elite women's lives and the re-production of inequality

This paper argues that the process by which accumulated capital is socialized and passed down the generations of the 'super-rich' is gendered in nature, heavily reliant on women, and currently under-researched. The author addresses this gap ethnographically, focusing on the gendered labour that women perform to sustain and reproduce the dynaist projects of elite families. In light of this data, elite London emerges as a social space structured around strong hierarchies not just of class but also gender. The paper concludes that it is essential to understand more about the interplay of these two structuring principles within elite spaces, focusing on the 'invisible' labour performed by elite women.

Download paper (pdf)

III Working Paper 6: The measurement of health inequalities: does status matter?

This paper examines several status concepts to examine self-assessed health inequality using the sample of world countries contained in the World Health Survey.  The authors also perform correlation and regression analysis on the determinants of inequality estimates assuming an arbitrary cardinalisation.  The findings indicate major heterogeneity in health inequality estimates depending on the status approach, distributional-sensitivity parameter and measure adopted.  The authors find evidence that pure health inequalities vary with median health status alongside measures of government quality.

III Working Paper 5:  Top incomes and the gender divide

A new Working Paper by Tony Atkinson, Alessandra Casarico and Sarah Voitchovsky looks at the gender divide at the top of the income distribution in 8 countries with individual taxation.

Watch:  International Inequalities Institute Annual Conference 2016

An international gathering of academics and policymakers to discuss inequality, our annual conference featured Thomas Piketty, Kimberlé Crenshaw (pictured), Kim Weeden, Facundo Alvardeo, Murray Leibbrandt, LSE MSc students and more on topics including intersectionality, income and wealth inequality, capital, and taxation.

Watch catch-up videos of the conference here

Atlantic Fellows programme

We are delighted to launch the III's Atlantic Fellows programme, a 20-year programme funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies to support leaders tackling inequalities. This is an ambitious programme designed to build a global community of leaders dedicated to changing policy, practice and public dialogue around inequalities.

The Atlantic Fellows programme at the III is created with a grant of £64.4m from The Atlantic Philanthropies. This is the largest philanthropic donation in LSE’s history and will fund 600 Fellows over the next 20-years to study at the LSE and our partner institutions.

Find out more about the programme here

LSE Press Release: Atlantic Fellows programme

Click here for details of all Atlantic Fellows partnerships

Challenging Inequalities - Watch or Listen to the event now

This public debate at LSE following the International Inequalities Institute Annual Conference 2016 explored different approaches to challenging inequality across the globe with Craig Calhoun, Shami Chakrabarti, Duncan Green, and Phumeza Mlungwana. Watch now

LSE Inequalities Publications Portal on the III website

The III connects research about inequality from across the LSE. Explore published research on inequality from leading academics in a range of subjects around the school. New publications added regularly: Search Publications now.

2016 APPAM International Conference - Inequalities: Addressing the Growing Challenge for Policymakers Worldwide

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management 2016 conference was held at the III, an international conference of policy researchers and analysts from around the globe to share the latest research and knowledge on the pressing challenge on inequality.

III Public Lecture

Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2016

Speaker: Anthony Shorrocks (Director, Global Economic Perspectives; Senior Research Fellow, World Institute of Development Economics Research)

Chair: Prof John Hills (LSE)

Discussants: Dr Abigail McKnight (LSE) and Deborah Hardoon (Oxfam)

Wed 23rd Nov, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, 6.15-7.45pm

Drawing on Credit Suisse data, Oxfam created worldwide headlines this year with the claim that 62 people own the same as half the world. To mark the publication of the Global Wealth Report 2016, Tony Shorrocks explains the basis of Credit Suisse data and summarises the current evidence on the level, distribution and trends of household wealth in all regions and countries of the world since 2000. 

The lecture will be followed by a reception in The LSE Garrick, Lower Ground Floor, Columbia House, Aldwych. 

The event is free and open to all. Please register by sending an e-mail to inequalities.institute@lse.ac.uk, stating whether you also wish to attend the reception following the lecture.

Inequalities seminar series

International Inequalities Institute / Sociology Department

Redefining Support for Redistribution:  preferences for reducing economic inequality in the US and Sweden

Speaker: Prof Leslie McCall (Northwestern University)

Tues 29th Nov, TW2 9.04, 12.15-13.30

In contrast to studies of the multiple determinants and implications of inequality, research into the potential array of solutions to the problem of inequality is narrower in scope. There are two main strands: the study of tax and social policies (social redistribution) and pay-compression policies that address inequalities in the labour market (market redistribution). The attitudinal literature is narrower still, focusing only on support for social redistribution. Prof Leslie McCall develops an expanded definition of preferences for redistribution that includes the second category and new questions on the GSS and ISSP that permit a careful comparison of support for the two kinds of policies in the United States and Sweden. 

III Public Lecture

Success and Luck:  good fortune and the myth of meritocracy

Speaker:  Robert H. Frank (Cornell Univ)

Discussant: Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP

Chair:  Prof Nicola Lacey (LSE)

Wed 7th Dec, Sheikh Zayed Theatre, 6.30-8pm

How important is luck in economic success?  As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hard-working.  But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much.  In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine.  In this talk about his new book, Success and Luck:  good fortune and the myth of meritocracy, Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success - and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy.

Social Solidarity in the "Knowledge Economy"

Speaker: Prof Kathleen Thelen (MIT)

Thurs 12th Jan 2017, Hong Kong Theatre, 6.30-8pm

This lecture examines cross-nationally divergent responses to the challenges posed by the transition to the "knowledge economy" and explores the role of the state in sustaining growth, employment, and social solidarity in the contemporary period.

The Piketty Opportunity

Speaker: Patricia Hudson (Emeritus Professor Cardiff University), Avner Offer (Chichele Professor of Economic History, All Souls College, Oxford Univ), Keith Tribe (Independent Scholar)

Thurs 26th Jan 2017, Hong Kong Theatre, 6.30-8pm

Following the publication of The Contradictions of Capital, editors and authors join with the International Inequalities Institute to discuss the analysis of inequality in an international context.

Getting Respect: responding to stigma and discrimination in the United States, Brazil and Israel

Speaker: Prof Michele Lamont

Wed 8th Mar, venue to be confirmed, 6.30-8pm

This lecture will address the issues in Micele Lamont's latest book, which contributes to the study of everyday racism and stigma management, the quest for recognition, and the comparative study of inequality and processes of cultural change.

Charles Booth Centenary Lectures 

Thursday November 3rd

Speakers: Mary Morgan   (LSE Economic History Dept), Alan Manning (LSE Economics Dept), Stephen Machin (LSE Centre for Economic Performance), Fran Tonkiss (LSE Sociology Dept), Suzi Hall (LSE Cities), Anne Power (LSE Social Policy Dept), Emily Grundy (LSE Social Policy Dept), Tim Newburn (Social Policy Dept) and John Hills (LSE International Inequalities Institute and Social Policy Dept).

This event, which coincided with the LSE Research Festival 2016, was part of a wider LSE celebration of pioneering social scientist Charles Booth, who died in 1916, and whose original survey into life and labour in London is held in the LSE Library.

Booth's investigation of poverty in London provides a key example both of the creative development of social science and of the ways in which research may be used to have a positive impact on society. The event brought together a group of scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the substance of Booth's ideas as well as his broader legacy for the social sciences and for contemporary social analysis.

Video recording available here.

Climate Change, Inequality and Social Policy

Speaker: Prof Ian Gough (CASE)

Thurs 3 Nov 2016

Download paper

Listen to podcast

Inequalities seminar series

International Inequalities Institute / Sociology Department

The Organizational Production of Earnings Inequalities

Speaker: Prof Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (UMASS)

Tues 25th Oct

Organisations raise capital, hire, produce, sell and distribute surplus, generating the intial distributions of income from which all other income inequalities follow. But what drives workplace inequality levels and trends?

See slides (pdf) 

Download video recording

Taxing the Rich: a history of fiscal fairness in the United States and Europe

Speaker: Prof David Stasavage

Chair: Prof David Soskice

In today's social climate of growing inequality, why are there not greater efforts to tax the rich? David Stasavage asks when and why countries tax their wealthiest citizens.

Slides (pdf)

2016 APPAM International Conference - Inequalities: Addressing the Growing Challenge for Policymakers Worldwide

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management 2016 conference was held at the III, an international conference of policy researchers and analysts from around the globe to share the latest research and knowledge on the pressing challenge on inequality.

Challenging Inequalities

This public debate at LSE following the International Inequalities Institute Annual Conference 2016 explored different approaches to challenging inequality across the globe with Craig Calhoun, Shami Chakrabarti, Duncan Green, and Phumeza Mlungwana.

International Inequalities Institute Annual Conference 2016

An international gathering of academics and policymakers to discuss inequality, our annual conference featured Thomas Piketty, Kimberlé Crenshaw (pictured), Kim Weeden, Facundo Alvardeo, Murray Leibbrandt, LSE MSc students and more on topics including intersectionality, income and wealth inequality, capital, and taxation.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

MacArthur 'Genius' award winning ethnographer Matthew Desmond speaks about his investigation into the low-income rental market and eviction in privately owned housing, and argues it is a cause, not just a symptom, of poverty.

Utopia in the Twenty-first Century

Five hundred years ago Thomas More’s Utopia was published, but what is its relevance today? Ruth Levitas argues that what is important about More is less the substance than the method: Utopia should be regarded not as a plan, but as a method of exploring potential futures. Part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2016.

Standing Out: Transgender Candidates Around the World

At this event transgender candidates from around the world shared their experience of running for office, and academics discussed how increased visibility increases acceptance.

Social Class in the 21st Century

Mike Savage and the team of sociologists responsible for the Great British Class Survey  discussed their findings and proposed a new way of thinking about social class in Britain today, arguing that while the class war was over the new politics of class are only just beginning. This event also saw the launch of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Poverty and Inequalities Programme.

Too Many Children Left Behind

Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University explains her work as part of a team of social scientists who compared educational outcomes and their link to family socio-economic status across the English speaking world. Their striking findings include that much inequality is present before children start school. Joint event with CASE.

Elites and Urban Dynamics: New Perspectives Conference

A one-day seminar funded by the ESRC Alpha Territory project, in association with the LSE International Inequalities Institute, organised by Rowland Atkinson (University of Sheffield), Roger Burrows (Goldsmiths) and Mike Savage (LSE). 

The Great Divide with Joseph E. Stiglitz

Why has inequality increased in the Western world and what can we do about it? Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz suggests ways to counter this growing problem.

Inequality in the 21st Century Conference with Thomas Piketty

A day long conference with Thomas Piketty, Centennial Professor at the III whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been of global significance in shaping debates about inequality. This joint conference with the LSE Department of Sociology and the British Journal of Sociology was the official launch of the III.

Inequality: What can be done?

World leaders have come to recognise the importance of income inequality but the consensus remains that 'nothing can be done'. Professor Sir Tony Atkinson argues that present levels of inequality are not inevitable and that there are concrete measures to be taken to tackle inequality.