The Profit Paradox: how thriving firms threaten the future of work
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Online public event.
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Speaker: Professor Jan Eeckhout (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
Discussants: Professor Tommaso Valletti (Imperial College London) and Professor Ioana Marinescu (University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant, and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more.
Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil.
Is There a “Grand Gender Convergence” in 21st Century Canada? The jury is still out
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
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Speaker: Professor Gordon Anderson (University of Toronto)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
Gender equity in the labour market has been an issue in western economies since the mid 19th century. Much progress has been made since that time and has been dubbed the “The Grand Gender Convergence”. However, recently concern has been expressed as to whether the progress has stalled. In the absence of gender discrimination within the context of an equal opportunity paradigm, if willingness to work and acquire human resources is similarly distributed across the gender divide, females and males with similar human resource stocks should have similar income distributions. Here, new techniques are introduced for examining the convergence of male and female resources and outcomes which are exemplified in an analysis of gender convergence in Canada’s 21st Century labour market.
Inequality, from regional to global: insights from LIS and LWS data
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Monday 6 December 2021, 6:00pm to 7:30pm. Online public event.
Speakers: Dr Nora Waitkus (LSE, III), Professor Branko Milanovic (The City University of New York), Professor Frank Cowell (LSE, Department of Economics), Professor Peter Lanjouw (Luxemburg Income Study)
Discussant: Professor Janet Gornick (The City University of New York)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
This event launched the new Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Satellite Office., how to access the data from LSE premises, and presents overviews what analysis can be done with LIS, LWS, and more.
LIS is a cross-national data center located in Luxembourg which serves as a global community of researchers, educators, and policy makers. LIS acquire datasets with income, wealth, employment and demographic data from many high- and middle-income countries, harmonies them to enable cross-national comparisons, and makes them publicly available in two databases, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and the Luxembourg Wealth Study Database (LWS).
Shackled in Debt: Global Capitalism, Economic Crisis and Penal Politics in Greece
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
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Speaker: Dr Leonidas Cheliotis (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Fabrício Mendes Fialho (Research Officer, LSE III)
This seminar identified the direction and assesses the extent of influence exerted by government political orientation and by economic downturn upon the evolution of incarceration and other forms of state punishment in the context of two economic crises in Greece: the first experienced in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the second one in the 2010s.
Inequality and the Differentiation of Capital: the Scientific Project of Political Economy
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
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Speaker: Professor Facundo Alvaredo (Paris School of Economics and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
We see inequalities, we measure them, we describe increasing top income and wealth shares, but we cannot properly interpret and understand what we observe without a general theory that develops the concepts of commodity, money, capital, power, and history.
In this event, Professor Alvaredo argued that only the continuation of the living yet dormant Political Economy scientific project offers the keys to apprehend the challenges of contemporary capitalism (including our particular focus of concern: socioeconomic inequalities), where the main conflict is ‘who plans whom,’ and where the concept of capital differentiation explains all the social differentiations we observe (of labor, social classes, nation states, currencies, wealth, incomes).
Concentration of economic and political power in Latin America and the Caribbean
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the Latin America and Caribbean Centre (LACC)
Wednesday 17 November 2021, 6:00pm to 7:15pm. Online public event.
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Speaker: Dr Marcela Meléndez (Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, UNDP)
Discussants: Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch (British Academy Global Professor, LSE III) and Professor Jean-Paul Faguet (LSE Department of International Development)
Chair: Professor Gareth Jones (Director, LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre)
The UNDP Regional Human Development Report 2021 argues that a common factor behind the Latin America and the Caribbean high-inequality low-growth trap is the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few.
The report argues that monopoly power and political power are two sides of the same coin and controlling the former may help contain the latter. But how does the story of market power in LAC differ from the rest of the world? And should we be concerned about the role of other economic elites with power for policy interference like organised labour?
Comparing Distributions of Ordinal Data: Theory and Empirics
Part of the Opportunity and Mobility Seminar Series
. Online public event.
Speaker: Professor Stephen Jenkins (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Discussant: Professor Vanesa Jordá (University of Cantabria)
Chair: Fiona Gogescu (doctoral student, Department of Social Policy, LSE)
How to undertake distributional comparisons when personal well-being is measured using income is well-established. But what if personal well-being is measured using subjective well-being indicators such as life satisfaction or self-assessed health status?
In this seminar, Professor Jenkins discussed his recent work which addresses this issue and is partly stimulated by the increasing weight put on subjective well-being measures by international agencies, such as the OECD, and national governments. He reviewed methods appropriate for distributional comparisons in the ordinal data context, comparing them with those routinely used for comparisons of income distributions.
New Estimates of Inequality of Opportunity Across European Cohorts
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
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Read the slides here
Speaker: Professor Philippe Van Kerm (University of Luxembourg)
Chair: Dr Paolo Brunori (Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, LSE III)
This seminar, based on a study of the same name, provides a set of new estimates of inequality of opportunity (IOp) in Europe, using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Condition (EU-SILC). Unlike previous research, inequality of opportunity is estimated within birth cohorts, which is argued to be the appropriate population level for inequality of opportunity analysis. Most IOp measures require estimation of the conditional distribution of the outcome of interest given circumstances. With multiple circumstances and the sample sizes available in EU-SILC, distribution regression methods are used and combined with local kernel weighting to show how these can be used to estimate a large set of IOp measures. Endowed with cohort-level estimates of IOp, the relationship between educational policy variables measured at the time of parental education and offspring generation inequality of opportunity in adulthood are examined. A negative relationship between the duration of compulsory education of the parents and IOp among offspring is found, but the relationship is weak.
Upper secondary tracks and student competencies: A selection or a causal effect?
Part of the Opportunity and Mobility Seminar Series
. Online public event.
Speaker: Dr Moris Triventi (University of Trento and the Center for Social Inequality Studies)
Discussant: Dr Sara Geven (University of Amsterdam)
Chair: Dr Paolo Brunori (Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, LSE III)
In this seminar, Dr Triventi will present his paper which assesses whether the track attended in upper secondary education affects student competencies in Italy, by disentangling the genuine effects of track choices from selection biases related to the characteristics of students enrolled in different tracks. The article contributes to the literature by relying on a more detailed measure of tracking, by focusing on between-school tracking and exploring whether track effects vary systematically by student social background, a largely overlooked issue in previous research.
The authors adopt a counterfactual approach and rely on population panel data on a recent cohort of students assessed in 5th, 8th and 10th grade. They rely on an individual difference-in-difference strategy integrated with marginal mean weighting with stratification and inverse probability weighting, which are used respectively to better control for selection into tracks and account for missing data. First, the authors document strong social selection into tracks, along various students’ characteristics. Second, they find that track effects are smaller once accounting for selection processes but are still substantial on both reading and mathematics competencies, albeit slightly larger in the latter subject. Beyond the anticipated advantage of the academic track over vocational education, they also find differential effects of attending different curricula within these tracks. Third, the benefits of attending the academic tracks appear to be rather homogeneous across students from different social backgrounds.
Political Equality: what is it and why does it matter?
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
Speaker: Professor Tim Besley (Department of Economics, LSE)
Chair: Professor Alpa Shah (Convenor Global Economies of Care Research Theme and Professor in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology)
Commentators and researchers have largely studied inequality, both theoretically and empirically, using a distributional framework. In economics, the focus has mainly been on differences in income and wealth, thus putting the distribution of utility or welfare, and its dependence on material factors, front and centre. This has motivated much statistical work on the measurement of inequality, such as changes in the Gini coefficient or ratios of resource ownership between groups (e.g. 90:10 ratios). In political philosophy and political science, the emphasis in studies of (political) inequality has been on analysing the skewed distribution of power in society, although no parallel literature on measurement has emerged to date. This too is consequently a study of distribution, thereby creating a common thread across the social sciences.
Professor Besley argues that political inequality is a distinctive type of inequality. First, it cannot be reduced to the factors that routinely go into thinking about economic inequality. Second, its currency is performative, not distributive and is fundamentally about the nature and quality of social relations; politics is intrinsically process-oriented, comprising various “political transactions” between citizens, representatives, and interest groups, among others. Thus, to understand political equality, we need to appreciate how individuals relate to one another through the democratic process.
Taxation History, Theory, Law and Administration
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
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Speaker: Professor Parthasarathi Shome (Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE III)
Discussant: Ricardo Guerrero Fernández (King's College London)
Chair: Professor Robin Burgess (International Growth Centre, LSE)
Drawing on the book of the same name, this discussion focussed on taxation and its ramifications for inequality in different aspects. Professor Shome covered the theoretical concern with equality in taxation, the characteristics that address equality in actual tax codes, the history of international taxation including the latest discussions on a global minimum tax so that tax revenues are beneficially shared across nations, and the equal treatment of taxpayers by the tax administration.
Technological Change, Cities and Spatial Inequality
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
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Speakers: Professor Simona Iammarino (Department of Geography and Environment, LSE), Dr Tom Kemeny (III Visiting Fellow) and Dr Megha Mukim (World Bank Group)
Chair: Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch (III Distinguished Policy Fellow)
Technological change is reshaping economic geography, raising profound challenges for economic development. The tech sector is concentrated in a small number of superstar cities, while the economies of less successful cities have found themselves languishing in middle-income traps. This raises significant challenges for policy – how to spread the benefits of the high-tech economy, without diluting its benefits? How can we ensure low-wage workers benefit from the innovation economy?
New Data and New Dimensions of Inequality: launch of the public economics of inequality
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
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Speakers: Dr Xavier Jaravel (Department of Economics, LSE), Professor Camille Landais (Department of Economics, LSE), Dr Daniel Reck (Department of Economics, LSE) and Professor Johannes Spinnewijn (Department of Economics, LSE)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director
In this inaugural lecture the speakers illustrated how big data from administrative registers allows to go beyond standard measurement of inequality. The discussed topics include gender inequality, the contribution of tax evasion and price inflation to inequality in wealth and consumption, and inequality in health outcomes. The panellists discussed how new data sources can provide new insights to old questions and allow to answer new questions as well. The presentations are followed by a discussion by Professor Platt and a Q&A moderated by Professor Ferreira.
This event launched the new III research theme "Public Economics of Inequality", which aims to bring the classic approach in Public Economics and its most recent advances to the study of inequality.
Is Inequality a Side Effect of Central Bank Independence?
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
Since the 1980s, income inequality has increased substantially in several countries. This event is based on a paper that builds a theory linking these dynamics to central bank independence. We posit the existence of three mechanisms that indirectly tie central bank independence to inequality. First, central bank independence constrains fiscal policy and weakens a government's ability to engage in redistribution. Second, central bank independence incentivizes governments to deregulate financial markets, which generates a boom in asset values and increases non-wage returns. Third, to contain unemployment, governments actively promote policies that weaken the bargaining power of workers. Together, these policies strengthen secular trends towards higher within-country inequality.
Empirically, the analysis finds a strong relationship between central bank independence and inequality, as well as a varying degree of support for each of the three mechanisms. From a policy perspective, our findings contribute to knowledge on the undesirable side effects of central bank independence.
Speaker: Dr Andreas Kern (Georgetown University)
Chair: Dr Joaquin Prieto (Research Officer, LSE III)
Watch the video here
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Read the slides here
Social Policy: a critical and intersectional analysis
Hosted by the Department of Social Policy and International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
Welfare states face profound challenges. Widening economic and social inequalities have been intensified by austerity politics, sharpened by the rise in ethno-nationalism and exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, recent decades have seen a resurgence of social justice activism at both the local and the transnational level. Yet the transformative power of feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial/decolonial thinking has become relatively marginal to core social policy theory, while other critical approaches – around disability, sexuality, migration, age and the environment – have found recognition only selectively.
Join us for this event that will take the form of an open conversation about the new book by Fiona Williams, Social Policy. A Critical and Intersectional Analysis. Following a presentation of the key themes and arguments in the book by Williams, the three discussants will share their perspectives.
Speakers: Professor Fiona Williams (University of Leeds), Dr Timo Fleckenstein (Department of Social Policy, LSE), Dr Isabel Shutes (Department of Social Policy, LSE) and Dr Armine Ishkanian (Convenor Politics of Inequality research theme, LSE III; Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Professor Lucinda Platt (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Feminist Readings of COVID-19: a conversation
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted profoundly the ways in which we labour and live. It has revealed the centrality of care and social reproduction for the functioning of our economy. Moreover, it has clearly revealed the strength of feminist understandings of the world economy, including their focus on the world of work, households and care, and collective action.
This panel is organised as a conversation exploring the gendered impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods, life-making sectors, the world of work. Themes explored include the differential impact of the pandemic on women, the restructuring of social reproduction, and the rise of novel work dichotomies such as 'essential' and 'non-essential' work. The panel will also explore which policies and practices are likely to centre the post-pandemic recovery on gendered labour, care, and social reproduction.
Speakers: Professor Naila Kabeer (Department of Gender Studies, LSE), Dr Alessandra Mezzadri (Department of Development Studies, SOAS) and Dr Sara Stevano (Department of Economics, SOAS)
Chair: Shalini Grover, (Research Fellow, LSE III)
Watch the video here
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The Dawn of Everything
Hosted by the Department of Anthropology and International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
Join us for this event in which David Wengrow will be in conversation with Alpa Shah about his new book co-authored with the late David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
A new science of history, it overturns our ideas of social evolution, and reveals new possibilities for human emancipation. Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, Graeber and Wengrow question our fundamental assumptions about the origins of inequality, showing how history contains many more hopeful moments than we’ve been led to believe, once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there.
Speakers: Professor David Wengrow (Institute of Archaeology, University College London) and Professor Alpa Shah (Convenor Global Economies of Care Research Theme and Professor in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Researching Race and Racial Inequality in the UK Film Industry
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
The growth of the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) over the past 20 years has coincided with an increased awareness of and research on prevalent racial inequalities in the sector. This has included studies on how Black and ethnic minority people are included in, represented by and experience the UK film industry in particular. Using a unique dataset, major new research undertaken by Dr Clive Nwonka (University College London) and Professor Sarita Malik (Brunel University London) in collaboration with the British Film Institute is exploring the relationship between racial inequality, diversity and cultural policy in the UK film sector by researching through both quantitative and qualitative modes how factors such as regionality, genre have challenged how we must interpret data-led approaches to the study of racial and ethnic difference within the sector and the role of testimony in understanding the nature of discriminatory institutional cultures and practices.
Speakers: Dr Clive Nwonka (Visiting Fellow, LSE III; University College London) and Professor Sarita Malik (Brunel University London)
Chair: Dr Luna Glucksberg (Research Fellow, LSE III)
Changing the Story on Disability?
Hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
This event will hear from those who are striving to shift narratives around disability through public awareness campaigns globally and will explore whether and how an empirical approach to ‘framing’ could effectively move public perceptions and behaviours.
Thirty years after the world’s first disability discrimination law (the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990), and fourteen years after the UN adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, debate remains fierce on how to influence public attitudes and behaviours towards disabled people: how to erode and replace discriminatory stereotypes. Disability rights advocates argue that charities (perhaps inadvertently) reinforce negative imagery in their promotion and fundraising. Yet arguably defining disability as a core equality issue has not, as yet, lit up public consciousness and action.
Speakers: Liz Sayce (JRF Practitioner Fellow, LSE III), Tom Shakespeare (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), Fredrick Ouko (Atlantic Fellow, LSE III), Kate Stanley (FrameWorks UK)
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian (Convenor Politics of Inequality research theme, LSE III; Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Read the slides here
Going to My Father's House: a history of my times
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
This event launches Patrick Joyce's book Going to My Father’s House. Patrick's parents moved from Ireland in the 1930s and made their home in west London. But they never really left the homeland. And so as he grew up among the streets of Paddington and Notting Hill and when he visited his family in Ireland, he felt a tension between notions of home, nation and belonging. Going to My Father’s House charts the historian’s attempt to make sense of these ties and to see how they manifest in a globalised world. He explores the places—the house, the street, the walls and the graves—that formed his own identity. He asks what place the ideas of history, heritage and nostalgia have in creating a sense of our selves. He concludes with a plea for a history that holds the past to account but also allows for dynamic, inclusive change. The event will comprise a discussion between the author; the historian of gender, empire and slavery Catherine Hall; and columnist and author Madeleine Bunting.
Speakers: Professor Patrick Joyce (University of Manchester), Professor Catherine Hall (University College London), Madeleine Bunting (Visiting Professor in Practice, LSE III)
Chair: Dr George Kunnath (Research Fellow, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Why is Latin American Inequality So Extreme?
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
For as long as data on income inequality has been available, Latin America has stood as one of the world’s two most unequal regions (along with sub-Saharan Africa). Despite some promising declines during the 2000s, inequality in many countries remains higher today than it was in the 1970s, suggesting a persistent high-inequality political economy equilibrium.
Inspired by the Deaton Review of inequality in the UK, an independent group of scholars from across many countries and disciplines – co-sponsored by the International Inequalities Institute at LSE; the Inter-American Development Bank; Yale University; and the Institute for Fiscal Studies – is launching a five-year review of what we know – and what we need to learn – about the nature, causes and consequences of the high-inequality equilibrium in Latin America. In this public launch event, three of the Review Panel members and two eminent discussants will present and debate some of the core questions of the nascent LAC Inequality Review.
Speakers: Dr Santiago Levy (Brookings Institution), Professor Nora Lustig (Tulane University), Dr Marcela Meléndez (UNDP), Professor James Robinson (University of Chicago), Professor Andrés Velasco (School of Public Policy, LSE)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
Watch the video here
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Caste, Class and Social Mobility in Palanpur
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
. Online public event.
Since its independence (1947), India has undergone profound social, political and economic transformations driven by the agrarian reforms in the 1950s, the Green Revolution in the 1970s and the neoliberal turn in the 1990s. While these changes have contributed to the economic development of the country, it is less clear to what extent better opportunities for social mobility opened up to individuals, particularly those from groups historically disadvantaged by their caste position. Previous large-scale studies of social mobility in India have been limited by the lack of intergenerational data and the impossibility to disaggregate administrative caste categories into jatis (birth-ascribed endogamous groups).
This talk is based on a study that partly overcomes these limits using unique individual-level data for the entire population of Palanpur (a North Indian village surveyed seven times from 1958 to 2015). Combining a quantitative analysis of trends, patterns and determinants of social mobility across three generations of individuals with a qualitative analysis of 102 semi-structured interviews carried out in 2018 during six-month fieldwork, the study aims at verifying whether social mobility has increased over time and whether caste, at the jati level, continues to be a determinant factor of social (im)mobility.
Speaker: Dr Floriane Bolazzi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Chair: Professor Nicholas Stern (Chair of the Grantham Research Institute, LSE)
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Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: a call to action
Hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank and International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
Profound changes have taken place in Latin America over the last 60 years. Income has been multiplied by 2.5 since 1960. A large expansion of education has drastically reduced the inequality in years of schooling. The relative size of the government has doubled. The labor force participation of women surged; fertility rates fell; and economies opened up to technological change and globalization. Why have these changes not been accompanied by substantial reductions in income or wealth inequality?
The objective of the Latin American and Caribbean Inequality Review (LACIR) is to advance on the understanding of the nature, causes and consequences of Latin America’s persistent high inequality to provide a basis for action intended to make the region more equitable. This event launches LACIR, a network of 15 renowned scholars on the topic and coordinated by the IDB, Institute for Fiscal Studies, London School of Economics and Yale University. The event will feature six panelists that have studied in depth the causes and consequences of inequality in the region and have implement policies to promote a more equitable region.
Speakers: Benigno López (IDB), Professor Orazio Attanasio (Yale University), Professor Francois Bourguignon (Paris School of Economics), Dr Ana de La O (Yale University), Professor Ana María Ibáñez (Universidad de los Andes) and Professor Andrés Velasco (School of Public Policy, LSE)
Chair: Cecilia Tornaghi (Managing Editor, Americas Quarterly)
Investing in Care? Private Finance and Social Infrastructures
. Online public event.
Social care is often seen as a drain on the economy, subject to a sustained crisis, which has been exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. Yet in the UK and internationally these services have attracted huge investor interest over the last two decades – from private equity firms and real estate funds to impact investors. In this event, we’ll explore: Why has private finance come to play such a significant role in care homes, home care and related efforts to achieve social impact? What does this mean for the many people working in care and all of us who rely on these services? What alternative approaches could we promote that might address the inequalities of the current ‘financialised’ system?
Speakers: Emma Dowling (Sociologist, University of Vienna; author of 'The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It?') and Amy Horton (Economic Geographer, UCL)
Discussant: Bev Skeggs (Former convenor of Global Economies of Care research theme, LSE III)
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor in Anthropology; convenor of the Global Economies of Care research theme, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Youth and Inequalities in the UK
Hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and International Inequalities Institute
. Online public event.
Even before the pandemic, young people in the UK faced many forms of inequality and their health and wellbeing was being eroded by a lack of jobs, a shortage of affordable housing, and cuts to public services. As the gap between the generations grows and young people’s voices and concerns are not adequately taken into account by policy makers and politicians, it is no surprise that young people increasingly feel anxious of what the future holds. This panel brings three young leaders who are working in and beyond their local communities to address inequalities in education, housing, employment and the criminal justice system.
Speakers: Jason Allen (St Mary's Youth Team Manager), Jeremiah Emmanuel (entrepreneur, youth activist and author) and Michaela Rafferty (III Atlantic Fellow; Young People’s Development Worker, Just for Kids Law)
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian (Convenor Politics of Inequality research theme, LSE III; Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Changing Elites
Part of the seminar series: Building collaborations in the sociological analysis of European elites
Wednesday 16 June 2021, 12:30pm to 14:00pm. Online public event.
This seminar will present research on changes in the British elite over the last 120 years. Using data from Who’s Who, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, genealogical records, Probate data and interviews, the speakers will explore topics such as social origin, diversity, power and wealth, and processes of reproduction and public performance among Britain’s elite.
Speakers: Aaron Reeves (Associate Professor of Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evalua-tion, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford), Dr Eve Worth (Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Elites, Department of Social Policy & Intervention, University of Oxford) and Sam Friedman (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, LSE)
Chair: Professor Mike Savage (Martin White Professor of Sociology, LSE; convenor of Wealth Elites and Tax Justice Research Theme, LSE III)
This event forms part of the Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Research Theme
Read the slides here
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
The Return of Inequality
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the Department of Sociology
. Online public event.
In his new book, The Return of Inequality, which he will discuss at this event, sociologist Mike Savage explains inequality’s profound deleterious effects on the shape of societies.
Speakers: Professor Mike Savage (Martin White Professor of Sociology, LSE; convenor of Wealth Elites and Tax Justice Research Theme, LSE III), Gurminder K Bhambra (Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex; Fellow of the British Academy), Madeleine Bunting (writer) and Patrick Le Galès (writer)
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Research Theme leader of ‘Global Economies of Care’, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Good Girls: Sonia Faleiro in conversation with Alpa Shah
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Wednesday 2 June 2021, 5:00pm to 6:30pm. Online public event.
Sonia Faleiro will be in conversation with Alpa Shah about her new book ‘Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing’. A deep investigation into the death of two low caste teenage girls, Faleiro explores the coming of age, the failures of care, and the violence of caste, honour and shame in contemporary India.
Speakers: Sonia Faleiro (journalist and writer) and Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Research Theme leader of ‘Global Economies of Care’, LSE III)
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian (III Research Theme Convenor (Politics of Inequality), Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
For a Reparatory Social Science
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Wednesday 26 May 2021, 6:30pm to 7:30pm. Online public event.
The social sciences are implicated in the reproduction of the very structures of inequality that are ostensibly their objects of concern. This is partly the result of their failure to acknowledge the ‘connected histories’ of one of their primary units of analysis – the modern nation-state, postcolonial scholar Gurminder K. Bhambra will argue.
In the inaugural Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity Keynote Lecture, Professor Bhambra will explore the social sciences’ failure to acknowledge the extent to which modern nation-states were bound up with relations of colonial extraction and domination. Without putting such relations at the heart of our analyses, we cannot address global inequality effectively. Positing colonial histories as central to national imaginaries and the structures through which inequalities are legitimated and reproduced, she will explore a framework for a reparatory social science, oriented to global justice as a reconstructive project of the present. The past cannot be undone, she will conclude, but its legacies can be transformed to bring about a world that works for us all.
Speakers: Gurminder K Bhambra (Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex; Fellow of the British Academy)
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian (III Research Theme Convenor (Politics of Inequality), Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Intergenerational Transfers, Wealth and Gender in Britain
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 25 May 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
This talk will investigate the impact of intergenerational wealth transfers on wealth levels and inequality, exploiting rich household survey data. It will analyse patterns of intergenerational transfer receipt by gender, and assesses the extent to which differences in the scale and nature of these receipts contribute to the gender wealth gap.
Speakers: Brian Nolan (Professor of Social Policy, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford) and Juan Palomino (Research Officer, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Download presentation slides here
Career Hubs as Corporate Global Networks
Part of the seminar series: Building collaborations in the sociological analysis of European elites
Wednesday 19 May 2021, 12:30pm to 14:00pm. Online public event.
This talk introduces the concept of “career hubs” as analytical strategy to understand corporate global business elites. While studies on corporate interlocks, based on network analyses between boards of directors, investigate the organization and coordination of corporate control, career hubs, defined as the most frequent common career organizations, allows us to study the formative years and the circulation of ideas and knowledge among the most important business leaders. We ask whether we can identify global career hubs, and if those career hubs differ according to the national context in countries such as the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan or China.
Speakers: Felix Bühlmann (Associate Professor, University of Lausanne), Christoph Houman Ellersgaard (Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School), Anton Grau Larsen (Assistant Professor, Copenhagen Business School and the Uni-versity of Roskilde) and Jacob Aagard Lunding (PhD Student, Copenhagen Business School)
Chair: Professor Johannes Hjellbrekke (Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway)
This event forms part of the Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Research Theme
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Faces of Inequality: a mixed methods approach to multidimensional inequalities
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 18 May 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
This paper, co-authored with Dr Ingrid Bleynat, presents a new mixed methods approach to measuring and understanding multidimensional inequality, and applies it to new data for Mexico City. Quantitative and qualitative dimensions of inequality are incorporated, integrating the concerns of both economists and sociologists.
This portrayal of inequality combines the representativeness of quantitative approaches with the depth and nuance of qualitative analyses of lived experience, habitus, and social relations.
Speaker: Paul Segal (Reader in Economics of Development, Department of International Development at King's College London)
Chair: Dr Tahnee Ooms (Research Officer, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
The Heirs, the Managers and the Bureaucrats: sketching economic power in contemporary France
Part of the seminar series: Building collaborations in the sociological analysis of European elites
Wednesday 12 May 2021, 12:30pm to 14:00pm. Online public event.
This seminar will present an original dataset that combines organisational and prosopographical data. The authors resort to geometric data analysis to study the forms of differentiation, the principles of hierarchisation and the modes of coordination that structure economic power in contemporary France.
Speakers: François Denord (CNRS, CESSP, France), Paul Lagneau-Ymonet (PSL, Paris-Dauphine, IRISSO, France) and Sylvain Thine (CESSP, France)
Chair: Professor Mike Savage (Martin White Professor of Sociology, LSE; convenor of Wealth Elites and Tax Justice Research Theme, LSE III)
This event forms part of the Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Research Theme
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Refusing Discriminatory Technologies of Power: racial justice and the challenge of hi-tech policing
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 11 May 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
From informational capitalism to biased code, technological systems increasingly form part of larger structures of oppression and domination. This talk tackles the topic of technology, injustice, and inequity with a focus on bottom-up practices of resistance, rejection, and refusal of digital and automated systems that increasingly govern people’s lives.
Drawing from examples of data-driven policing in Europe and the United States, this talk explores the narrative, technical, and political challenges faced by members of affected communities - especially minoritised and racialised communities - in countering these discriminatory technologies of power. Given these challenges, what can affected communities learn from other practices of technological refusal?
Speaker: Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan (Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE)
Chair: Professor Ellen Helsper (Research Theme Convenor (Politics of Inequality); Professor in Digital Inequalities, Department of Media and Communications, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Are Regional Inequalities Driving Us Apart? Geographical and political polarisation in an age of populism
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Thursday 6 May 2021, 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Online public event.
There is widespread concern about regional inequalities in many countries. The political shocks of the 2010s - including Brexit, Trump's 2016 election, and the Gilets Jaunes - all have deep roots in the poorest regions.
Is regional inequality driving political polarisation? And, if so, what can we do about it? This event brings together high-profile authors from political science, geography, economics, and psychology to debate this question.
Speakers: Jonathan Hopkin (Professor of Comparative Politics, European University Institute, LSE), Maria Abreu (University Senior Lecturer, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge), Ellen Helsper (Professor of Digital Inequalities, Department of Media and Communications, LSE), Andrés Rodriguez-Pose (Princesa de Asturias Chair; Professor of Economic Geography, LSE)
Chair: Professor Neil Lee (Professor of Economic Geography, LSE; Associate, III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Homoploutia: Top Labor and Capital Incomes in the United States, 1950-2020
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 4 May 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
Homoploutia describes the situation in which the same people are rich in the space of capital and labor income. In this talk, survey and administrative data is combined to document the evolution of homoploutia in the United States since 1950, finding that the increase in labor income inequality contributed to the rising homoploutia, which in turn explains 20% of the increase in interpersonal income inequality since 1986.
Speaker: Yonatan Berman (Research Fellow, London Mathematical Laboratory)
Chair: Dr Nora Waitkus (Research Officer, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Mary Wollstonecraft and the Vindication of Human Rights
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Wednesday 28 April 2021, 6:00pm to 7:15pm. Online public event.
Join two great minds in exploring the themes of justice and equality: Professor Amartya Sen and Enlightenment hero Mary Wollstonecraft, as Professor Sen gives the inaugural Wollstonecraft Society Lecture.
Mary Wollstonecraft claimed human rights for all. She overcame limited education and a background of domestic violence to become an educational and political pioneer, and one of the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth century. As well as her intellectual audacity, it is Wollstonecraft’s love for humanity, her self-proclaimed “ardent affection for the human race” that continues to inspire.
This event explores how, despite a savage pandemic, economic downturn, and increasing isolation in both political and individual life, there is a counter-story of community building and education, of optimism and hope.
Speakers: Professor Amartya Sen, Bee Rowlatt (writer and public speaker)
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Research Theme leader of ‘Global Economies of Care’, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Debating Capital and Ideology
Hosted by the Department of Sociology, the International Inequalities Institute and British Journal of Sociology
Monday 26 April 2021, 12:30pm to 2:00pm. Online public event.
This event will debate Thomas Piketty’s urgent new book, Capital and Ideology, and will feature an interdisciplinary panel of experts. The conversation will probe his views on race and slavery, the nature of capitalism, the impact of political divides, and the contours of long-term social change.
Piketty, in conversation with interlocutors, will present the book’s framework and his historically-informed approach for understanding and combating inequalities today. This discussion is linked to a just-published special issue of The British Journal of Sociology, featuring a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary set of responses to Piketty.
Speakers: Professor Gurminder Bhambra (University of Sussex), Dr Jens Lerche (SOAS), Dr Sanjay G. Reddy (The New School for Social Research), Professor Diego Sánchez-Ancochea (Oxford University) and Dr Nora Waitkus (LSE III)
Respondent: Professor Thomas Piketty (EHESS and Paris School of Economics)
Chair: Poornima Paidipaty (Department of Sociology, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Anonymous and Non-Anonymous Growth Incidence Curves in the United States, 1968-2016
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 30 March 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
This paper combines cross-sectional and longitudinal labor income data to present a comparison between anonymous and non-anonymous growth incidence curves in the United States during the past 50 years. If anonymous growth incidence tend to be upward sloping because of increasing inequality during that period, the same is not true of non-anonymous curves, which prove to be at or non-significantly downward sloping, suggesting some neutrality of growth when initial income positions are accounted for. This is true when using either the PSID data or synthetic panels based on CPS data and one-parameter functional representations of income mobility. Flat non-anonymous curves are observed even in periods of increasing cross-sectional income inequality. Differences between anonymous and non-anonymous curves thus matter for the interpretation of inequality changes, social welfare and policy.
Speaker: Professor François Bourguignon (Emeritus Professor of Economics, Paris School of Economics)
Chair: Professor Francisco Ferreira (Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and LSE III Director)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Innovation in Real Places: strategies for prosperity in an unforgiving world
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Monday 29 March 2021, 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Online public event.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest economic shock in living memory, and the economic impact has been uneven across cities and regions. How do we build back better after COVID? For the last few decades, the dominant growth model has been to focus on technological innovation. Yet, while a small number of cities and regions have benefited, many other communities have struggled. In his latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, Dan Breznitz sets out to challenge this model and sets out how these communities might succeed. He argues that by understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, cities and regions can foster surprising forms of specialized innovation.
Speakers: Professor Dan Breznitz (Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, University of Toronto), Vidhya Alakeson (Chief Executive of Power to Change) and Professor David Soskice (Professor of Political Science and Economics, LSE Department of Government)
Chair: Professor Neil Lee (Professor of Economic Geography, LSE; Associate, III)
This event had live captioning and BSL interpreters.
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Post-Divorce Intimacy in Contemporary Asia
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Thursday 25 March 2021, 9:00am to 2:00pm.
This workshop on divorce and its aftermath in contemporary Asia is based on a forthcoming edited volume. Rapid socio-economic changes across Asia, along with the unremitting emphasis on strong family values, make the Asian region an illuminating case study for research on divorce and intimacy. Across differences of class, ethnicity and race, and community, our volume seeks to examine post-divorce trajectories. Can the lived experience of divorce be a porthole, in the sense of a break with the past, a gateway between two worlds; or does it augment stark inequalities that are historically rooted? What can divorce signal about family formations, societal transformations, age and identity in globalizing Asia? Our papers will explore how former spouses - including heterosexual and queer subjects, reconfigure themselves in relation to one another, and remap a whole set of other intimate relationships, to rebuild their lives after divorce.
Speakers/Participants: Allison Alexy (University of Michigan), Asha L. Abeyasekera (University of Colombo), Kay Cook (Swinburne University of Technology), Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Caren Freeman (University of Virginia), Katy Gardner (LSE), Shalini Grover (LSE), Chaya Koren (University of Haifa), Livia Holden (University of Paris Nanterre and University of Padoua), Jayaprakash Mishra (Indian Institute of Technology), Quah Ee Ling Sharon (University of Wollongong), Kaveri Qureshi (University of Edinburgh), Tannistha Samanta (FLAME University) and Kailing Xie (University of Warwick)
Chairs: Dr Shalini Grover (Research Officer, LSE III) and Dr Kaveri Qureshi (Lecturer, Social Policy, University of Edinburgh)
See the programme here
When Violence Endures: inequality, resistance, and repression in India's Maoist guerrilla zones
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 23 March 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
This paper engages with the concept of violence in the context of the ongoing Maoist insurgency and counterinsurgency in India. During the five-decade-long armed conflict involving the Maoist guerrillas and the landless/poor peasants on the one side, and the state security forces and upper-caste/private militias on the other, violence has taken multiple forms. It has spiralled, giving rise to new formations and new theatres of war, especially in the forested areas which are home to indigenous populations. In this paper, I attempt to conceptualise this enduring violence and reflect on the possibility of resolutions, drawing on twenty years of my research in conflict-affected regions in India, and recently in Colombia. Employing the framework of the ‘Spiral of Violence’ developed by Helder Camara (1909–1999), a Brazilian liberation theologian, I explore the many faces of violence as manifested in a continuum of structural inequality, resistance and repression. As there has been no meaningful transition from violence to peace in India’s guerrilla zones, I draw on a comparative model, and discuss the insights that the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia might provide for India. In Colombia, also ravaged by the cycle of violence, the peace agreement between the FARC and the state facilitated the end of a similarly long-lasting armed conflict. The comprehensive peace process in Colombia, in spite of its setbacks, has demonstrated that without addressing the persisting inequalities, the spiral of violence cannot be broken. What could India learn from the achievements and pitfalls of the Colombian model?
Speaker: Dr George Kunnath (Research Fellow, III)
Chair: Professor Ellen Helsper (Research Theme Convenor (Politics of Inequality) and Professor in Digital Inequalities at the Department of Media and Communications)
How to Fight Inequality: and why that fight needs you - Book Launch
Hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity
Thursday 18 March 2021, 2:00pm to 3:30pm. Online public event.
Inequality is the crisis of our time. The growing gap between a few at the top and the rest of society damages us all. No longer able to deny the crisis, governments across the globe have pledged to address it – and yet inequality keeps on getting worse. In this book, international anti-inequality campaigner Ben Phillips discusses why winning the debate is not enough: we have to win the fight. Drawing on his insider experience, and his personal exchanges with the real-life activists and leaders of successful movements, he shows how the battle against inequality has been won before, and he shares a practical plan for defeating inequality again. Following a presentation by the author, discussants, Masana Ndinga-Kanga and Pedro Telles, who are Senior Fellows on the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme (International Inequalities Institute, LSE), will share their reflections on book and also speak about their own work and experiences in fighting inequality. This event is organized under the auspices of the Politics of Inequality research theme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.
Speakers: Masana Ndinga-Kanga (Lead for the Crisis Response Fund, MENA and Women Human Rights Defenders at CIVICUS), Ben Phillips (Co-founder of the Fight Inequality Alliance), Pedro Telles (Co-founder and director of Quid, a communications and mobilisation lab focused on democracy and human rights).
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian (III Research Theme Convenor (Politics of Inequality), Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
This event had live captioning and BSL interpreters.
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Racial Discrimination in Hiring?: results from a harmonized field experiment in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain
Part of the seminar Series on Migration Ethnicity and Race
Tuesday 16 March 2021, 1:00pm to 2:00pm. Online public event
This event will present the first large-scale comparative field experiment on racial discrimination in hiring conducted simultaneously and with a harmonized methodology in three European countries: Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.
The event is based on a study that sent fictitious résumés to real vacancies randomly varying applicants’ ancestry (signaled foremost by ethnic names) and applicants’ phenotype (signaled using applicants’ photographs). Fictitious applicants are young-adult country nationals born to parents from 44 different countries of ancestry (N≈12,900). The study examines average differences in callback rates across four phenotypic groups, corresponding with popular perceptions of ‘races’, and for applicants coming from four regions of ancestry (Europe and US, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia). It finds that applicants’ phenotype matters a great deal in all three European countries, yet seems to matter differently depending on applicants’ ancestry and country of the experiment.
Speaker: Dr Javier Polavieja (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)
Chair: Professor Lucinda Platt (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Households, Inequalities and Care: lockdown experiences from the UK, New Zealand and India
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 09 March 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
This event will explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the need to centre an understanding of the household in policy-making and politics if we are to mitigate inequalities. It will do so by unveiling the insights of immersive anthropological research on the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns as experienced in the UK, New Zealand and India. It will explore the inequalities, in particular an informal and formal care deficit generated by UK national and local lockdowns, along with the problematic assumptions about the household and community in COVID-19 policy interventions in the UK. It will analyse the success, but also the limitations, of bubble policies in the New Zealand as a strategy for allowing citizens to support loved ones living beyond their immediate residence whilst nevertheless preventing the spread of COVID-19. And it will highlight the significance of the spatio-temporal division of households that were at the heart of the plight of the hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers who took to their feet and marched home when the lockdowns were called in India. Overall, we will suggest alternative approaches to policy and politics grounded in anthropological insights and methods.
Speakers: Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Research Theme leader of ‘Global Economies of Care’, III, LSE), Professor Laura Bear (Professor of Anthropology, LSE), Dr Nick Long (Associate Professor of Anthropology, LSE)
Chair: Dr Insa Koch (Associate Professor of Law and Anthropology)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Find Laura Bear's report summary here
Find Nick Long's report here
Find Alpa Shah's article here
The Underbelly of the Virus: how COVID-19 revealed our unequal world
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute as part of LSE's Shaping the Post-COVID World Initiative.
Wednesday 03 March 2021, 2:30pm to 4:00pm. Online public event.
In the twelve months since the first lockdowns in the Global North, there has been a measurable rise in inequality in almost every country in the world, with preliminary studies indicating that unless urgent action is taken, the crisis will lead to a lasting, and even greater, economic divide. In 2020, the virus may have pushed an additional 200 to 500 million people below the $5.50 a day poverty line, while it took just nine months for the fortunes of the 1,000 richest people on Earth to return to their pre-pandemic highs.
This discussion will bring together an international panel of practitioners, scholars and policy-makers to discuss a new Oxfam briefing paper, The Inequality Virus: Bringing together a world torn apart by coronavirus through a fair, just and sustainable economy. The report draws on a survey of 295 economists from 79 countries, and supports the troubling view that the global spread of coronavirus has exposed, fed off and increased inequalities of wealth and income, gender and race.
In a world in which the super-rich take private jets to Dubai to jump the vaccination queue as health workers die waiting to get an injection, and asset managers continue to earn 1,400 times more than nurses, what hope is there to “build back better”? Our panellists will consider the intersecting inequalities that have led some of us to be much worse affected by the pandemic than others, and examine systemic problems and potential solutions.
Speakers: Tracy Jooste (Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity), Pablo Andres Rivero Morales (Oxfam), Julie Seghers (Oxfam International), and Mwanahamisi Singano (African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) )
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian (III Research Theme Convenor (Politics of Inequality), Executive Director AFSEE programme and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Intersectionality, Intimacy and Inequality: repartnering, class and race/ethnicity among divorced women in the 'second phase' of life
Part of the seminar Series on Migration Ethnicity and Race
Tuesday 02 March 2021, 1:00pm to 2:00pm. Online public event
Responding to increasing discomfort with the lack of diversity in studies of intimacy in later life, this seminar compares repartnering among middle class White British women and working class British Asian women in their ‘second phase of life’. bell hooks has written approvingly of the ‘second phase’ of life as a time, in mid-life after divorce and relationship breakdown, when women may move from a place of dependency and intimate inequalities towards stridently asserting their needs and desires.
This seminar interrogates these claims. We juxtapose two separate studies to break open questions of empowerment in the ‘second phase’ of life. Whilst narratives of self-discovery were common in both studies, our interlocutors’ different social positioning meant that investment in independence stemmed from distinct fallback positions. Aspiring towards independence did not necessarily translate to their intimate relationships, and women’s experiences of dating reproduced wider structures of inequality. Whilst dating experiences were refracted through distinct cultural sensibilities, narratives of respectability were pervasive. We conclude that divorced women’s navigations of repartnering in the ‘second phase’ of life are implicated in a range of intersectionalities and obdurate femininities.
Speakers: Dr Sarah Milton (Kings College London) and Dr Kaveri Qureshi (University of Edinburgh)
Chair: Professor Lucinda Platt (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Read the slides here
Wealth Inequality Across the Globe
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute as part of LSE's Shaping the Post-COVID World Initiative.
Thursday 18 February 2021, 12:00pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
This event will introduce a special issue of The Journal of Chinese Sociology, which will showcase new analyses of wealth inequality and their implications for social stratification and inequality in comparative perspective.
Chaired by Mike Savage, the contributions will range across Russia, China, South Korea, Brazil, as well as Europe and North America, to reflect on the size of the wealth gap, its dimensions and its significance for remaking traditional class divides.
Speakers: Professor André J. Caetano (Professor of Sociology and Demography, Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil), Professor Li Chunling (Professor of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Professor Louis Chauvel (Professor of Sociology, University of Luxembourg), Sventlana Mareeva (Centre Director of the Institute of Social Policy, Higher School of Economics Moscow), Professor Celi Scalon (Professor Sociology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Professor Kwang-Yeong Shin (Professor of Sociology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul)
Chair: Professor Mike Savage (Martin White Professor of Sociology, LSE and convenor of the Wealth Elites and Tax Justice Theme at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Read Louis Chauvel's slides here
Read Li Chunling's slides here
Read Sventlana Mareeva's slides here
Read Celi Scanlon & André J. Caetano's slides here
Read Kwang-Yeong Shin's slides here
This event had live captioning and BSL interpreters.
The Changing Geography of Social Mobility in the United States
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 16 February 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
New evidence shows that intergenerational social mobility – the rate at which children born into poverty climb the income ladder – varies considerably across the United States. Is this current geography of opportunity something new or does it reflect a continuation of long-term trends? We answer this question by constructing new data on the levels and determinants of social mobility across American regions over the twentieth century. We find that the changing geography of opportunity-generating economic activity restructures the landscape of intergenerational mobility, but factors associated with specific regional structures of interpersonal inequality that have “deep roots” generate persistence. This is evident in the sharp decline in social mobility in the Midwest as economic activity has shifted away from it, and the consistently low levels of opportunity in the South even as economic activity has shifted toward it. We conclude that the long-term geography of social mobility can be understood through the deep roots and changing economic fortunes of places.
Speaker: Dr Dylan Connor (Assistant Professor at School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University)
Chair: Dr Neil Cummins (Associate Professor of Economic History, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Migrants in the Chilean Labour Market: a story of successful Integration?
Part of the seminar Series on Migration Ethnicity and Race
Tuesday 09 February 2021, 1:00pm to 2:00pm. Online public event.
In recent years, Latin American countries have experienced rapidly increasing flows of intraregional migration as migrants flee poverty, political instability and violence. This process has been facilitated by immigration legislation that poses few obstacles to this migration. However, little research has focused on how well Latin American migrants integrate into the local labour markets of their destination countries, both in terms of whether they find employment opportunities and, just as importantly what type of employment they find.
This event draws on the paper using the Sehnbruch et al. (2020) multidimensional Quality of Employment Index to analyse how migrants are integrating into the Chilean labour market, which has received a sharply increasing number of migrants during the last five years in a context of stable institutional and political arrangements for migrants.
Speaker: Kirsten Sehnbruch (Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, LSE III)
Chair: Professor Lucinda Platt (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Read the slides here
COVID-19, Inequalities and the Future of Work
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
Monday 08 February 2021, 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Online public event.
The COVID pandemic has led to rapid changes in labour markets across the world. Some workers have used digital technology to work from home. But for many workers, particularly the low-paid, this has been impossible. Meanwhile, job losses have been worst the least well off. Because of this, there are concerns that the pandemic has exacerbated inequality. What does COVID mean for the future of work? Will it speed up employment polarisation? Or be a leveller, with low wage workers benefiting from greater use of technology? This event will interrogate the questions.
Speakers: Aveek Bhattacharya (Chief Economist at the Social Market Foundation), The Rt Hon. Yvette Cooper MP (Chair of the Fabian Commission of Work and Technology), and Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch (British Academy Global Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, III)
Chair: Professor Neil Lee (Professor of Economic Geography, LSE; Associate, III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Read Kirsten Sehnbruch's slides here
Read the 'Sharing the Future' report here
Read Aveek Bhattacharya's slides here
This event had live captioning and BSL interpreters.
Building a Caring Economy
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute as part of LSE's Shaping the Post-COVID World Initiative.
Thursday 04 February 2021, 6:00pm to 7:30pm. Online public event.
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has made us aware of an acute crisis of care that lies at the heart of global inequalities. Care has long been marginalised and neglected as a central part of our economy. It’s a crisis not just of care workers but moves from the intimate domain of our households to global planetary care itself. What is this crisis of care, how should we think about care, and what can be done to make care more central to what we value? How do we build back our global economy by putting care – care of people and care of the environment - at its centre? These crucial questions will be addressed through a discussion of three major recent interventions: The Labours of Love, The Care Manifesto and Creating a Caring Economy.
Speakers: Madeleine Bunting (Author and fomer Guardian columnist and associate editor), Professor Diane Elson, Professor Lynne Segal (Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies, Birkbeck, University of London).
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor in Anthropology and convenor of the Global Economies of Care theme in the International Inequalities Institute at LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
This event had live captioning and BSL interpreters.
The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 02 February 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
The last 40 years have seen a substantial fall in taxes on the rich across the OECD countries. This coincided with a period of rising income inequality, especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Given the difficulties of establishing causality from cross-country panel studies, however, the extent to which tax cuts on the rich have driven up income inequality remains an open empirical question. This paper aims to fill that gap in the literature by using new matching techniques for panel data to estimate the causal effect of major tax cuts on the rich on income inequality. As proponents of tax cuts on the rich often argue for their beneficial effects on economic performance due to efficiency gains and the reduction of behavioural distortions, we also estimate the effects of major tax cuts on the rich on economic growth and unemployment. Our analysis finds strong evidence that cutting taxes on the rich increases income inequality but has no effect on growth or unemployment. Overall, this new research suggests that lower taxes on the rich have made a significant contribution to increased income inequality in the OECD countries since the 1980s, with no offsetting gains in economic performance.
Speakers: Dr David Hope (Department of Political Economy, Kings College London, Visiting Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute), Dr Julian Limberg (Department of Political Economy, Kings College London)
Chair: Dr Luna Glucksberg (Research Fellow, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Read the slides here
The Politics of Inequality: why should we focus on resistance from below?
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute as part of LSE's Shaping the Post-COVID World Initiative.
Wednesday 27 January 2021, 2:00pm to 3:30pm. Online public event.
While it is now widely accepted that inequality is the defining issue of our time and there is growing research on the drivers and impacts of inequalities, there has been less focus on how inequalities are experienced and resisted by ordinary people and communities. The newly launched Politics of Inequality research theme at the International Inequalities Institute explores the practices of resistance, mobilisation, and contestation from a bottom-up perspective.
Speakers: Professor John Chalcroft (Professor of Middle East History and Politics in the Department of Government at LSE), Dr Flora Cornish (Associate Professor in Research Methodology in the Department of Methodology at LSE), Professor Ellen Helsper (Professor of Digital Inequalities in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE), Dr Armine Ishkanian (Associate Professor in Social Policy and Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE), Dr Sumi Madhok (Associate Professor in Transnational Gender Studies in the Department of Gender Studies at LSE)
Chair: Dr Alpa Shah (Associate Professor in Anthropology and convenor of the Global Economies of Care theme in the International Inequalities Institute at LSE)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
This event had live captioning and BSL interpreters.
The unintended consequences of quantifying quality: Does ranking school performance shape the geographical concentration of advantage?
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 26 January 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
Based on a paper of the same name, this talk will investigate whether quantifying school performance can have the perverse consequence of increasing the spatial concentration of advantage.
Combining research on residential segregation with the sociology of quantification, the writers argue that ranking school performance may induce affluent parents to sort into areas with higher ranked schools. This hypothesis is explored by analysing whether the introduction of league tables measuring school performance in the early 1990s in the UK affected the spatial concentration of advantage. The writers find that quantifying school quality has the unintended consequence of increasing the geographical concentration of advantage, potentially entrenching poverty and inequality.
Speakers: Dr Aaron Reeves (Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University, and a Visiting Senior Fellow in the International Inequalities Institute), Daniel McArthur (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University)
Chair: Dr Nora Waitkus (Research Officer, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Listen to the podcast here
Read the slides here
Deepening Democracy in Chile: from social crisis to constitutional revolution?
Hosted by the Latin America and Caribbean Centre and the International Inequalities Institute
Tuesday 19 January 2021, 6:00pm to 7:15pm. Online public event
In 2019, an explosion of social protest brought Chile to a standstill. Protesters had many far-reaching demands, not least the establishment of a new constitution and greater social justice in health, education, and pensions. These demands, however, met only with repression from security forces, who showed scant respect for protesters' human rights. Unrest continued well into 2020 and was only contained inadvertently by the country's first COVID-19 lockdown.
But social pressure has proved remarkably successful. In the national plebiscite of October 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly in favour of setting up a constituent assembly, yet many questions remain about the country's past and future. What factors lay behind the protests? Will a new consitution manage to satisfy social and political demands for change? Will it be able to lay the foundations for a fairer and more equitable society? This panel will debate these and other issues crucial to the future of Chile and the wider region.
Speakers: Emmanuelle Barozet (Professor of Sociology, University of Chile), Javier Couso (Professor of Constitutional Law, Diego Portales University, Chile), Oscar Landerretche (Professor of Economics, University of Chile)
Chair: Kirsten Sehnbruch (Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, LSE III)
Watch the video here
Apocalypse or new dawn? Social mobility, inequality and education in the post-COVID era
Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series
Tuesday 19 January 2021, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Online public event.
What are the prospects for social mobility in the wake of the Covid pandemic? Britain’s first Professor of Social Mobility will assess the future implications of growing educational and societal inequalities, drawing on evidence from the latest research and his new book.
Social mobility can be defined in many ways, but however conceived the dials appear to be pointing in the wrong direction, particularly for ‘Generation Covid’, the under 25s. We are failing the basic fairness test in society: with inequalities so extreme those on the lower rungs of the economic or social ladder face an impossible task in forging a decent life, let alone climbing the ladder. The Covid crisis has highlighted the escalating expectations placed on teachers, and the education system more widely, to solve all of society’s ills.
Building a more mobile and equal society will require radical long-term reforms both outside and inside the school gates, including a one-off progressive wealth tax; guarantees for decent and valuable jobs across all regions of the country; a credible vocational stream linking education and work; more resources for schoolsto tackle social welfare alongside teaching and learning; and a step change in the social mobility approach within universities.
Some scholars predict that society will eventually unravel as the disenfranchised rise up against the elites. But the Covid crisis also offers an historic opportunity to reset society and create a fairer and more sustainable future for all.
Speaker: Professor Lee Elliot-Major (Professor of Social Mobility, University of Exeter)
Chair: Dr Sara Camacho-Felix (Assistant Professorial Lecturer, LSE III)
Listen to the podcast here
Watch the video here