Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesdays, 12.30 to 1.30pm

The Inequalities Seminar Series at the International Inequalities Institute is a venue for scholars from LSE and beyond to present their innovative work on social and economic inequality. The seminars are open and free to all.

Upcoming Inequalities Seminars

Details of our seminars for Spring Term 2026 will be added here soon.

Previous Inequalities Seminars

Death and taxes: inheritance tax planning and unexpected mortality
31 March 2026

Speaker:
Dr Jeanne Bomare, Research Officer, LSE III

We use the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to identify the scale and mechanisms of inheritance tax planning in the United Kingdom. By providing an exogenous shock to mortality, the pandemic suddenly truncated the time available for anticipatory planning. Linking administrative inheritance tax returns to high-frequency mortality data, we compare the estates of individuals who died unexpectedly during the pandemic with those of observationally similar decedents from pre-pandemic years.

The rising tide: floods as drivers of income and welfare inequality in South Africa
24 March 2026

Speakers:
Dr Annalena Oppel, Research Fellow, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, LSE
Dr Enrico Nichelatti, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg

This paper examines how floods impact inequality in South Africa by linking georeferenced flood data with cross-sectional household and individual data from the National Income Dynamics Study survey. Our findings reveal that floods significantly reduce all income measures for individuals within 0.5 km of flood zones, with substantial spill-over effects extending to 1 km. While South Africa's extensive social grant system provides some cushioning, it is insufficiently shock responsive to prevent welfare declines.

Private capital markets and inequality
10 March 2026

Speaker:
Dr Clara Martínez-Toledano, Assistant Professor of Financial Economics, Imperial College London; Wealth Distribution and Political Cleavages Coordinator, WID.world

This paper studies the relationship between the growth in private capital markets and the rise in economic inequalities over the last two decades in the U.S. First, we document that the share of financing raised by early-stage companies from U.S. high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) tripled from 2004 to 2022. Second, exploiting both company- and state-level variation in exposure to the expanded federal capital gains tax exclusion on qualified small business stock (QSBS), we find that QSBS-eligible companies’ probability of staying private increased by 3.6 percentage points, and that the average income gap between HNWIs and other income earners increased by 7.2%. Third, we show that this rise in income concentration appears to have been driven by HNWIs’ excess returns on their early-stage investments relative to public stock market returns. Finally, using counterfactual simulations, we find that HNWIs’ excess returns on these investments accounted for 28% of the growth in the top 0.5% wealth share between 2010 and 2022.

Modern labour markets: an employment-capability framework for the future of work
17 February 2026

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Speaker:
Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch, Distinguished Policy Fellow, LSE III

On a theoretical level, the capability approach can be applied on three different ‘levels’: First, as a framework of thought, second, as a critique of other approaches to welfare evaluation, and third as a formula to make interpersonal comparisons of welfare (Robeyns, 2000). For Sen, their order of importance is precisely this ranking. Arguments about how the capability approach can serve to frame a debate on employment from these perspectives continues to be under-formulated. This theoretical paper therefore develops an employment-capability framework; relates it to other theoretical approaches to labour markets; and discusses how it can be used to undertake interpersonal comparisons.

Examining poverty reduction and welfare through the lens of empathy and dignity
10 February 2026

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Speaker:
Dr Keetie Roelen, Senior Research Fellow in Poverty and Social Protection and Co-Deputy Director at the Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD), Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS), Open University

In this seminar, Keetie offers a critical interrogation of anti-poverty and welfare policies through the lens of empathy and dignity. Based on her book The Empathy Fix. Why Poverty Persists and How To Change It, she explores the double standards and widespread myths that underpin attitudes to poverty, and lead to responses that serve to police and punish the poor. Drawing on research and examples from around the world, Keetie unpacks notions of behavioural change, meritocracy, self-reliance within current anti-poverty and welfare policy, and what policy options may offer more empathetic and dignified alternatives.

Residential diversity in young adulthood and later life attitudes toward immigration
3 February 2026

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Speaker:
Dr Haley McAvay, Associate Professor of Sociology, LSE Department of Sociology

Inequalities in residential environments have received a lot of attention in understanding the appeal of anti-immigration parties across advanced democracies in recent years. This paper explores the long-term association between neighbourhood context in adolescence and attitudes towards immigration later in life drawing on a cohort study from the UK (Next Steps) matched with census data. Drawing on the premises of the impressionable years hypothesis and contact theory, we posit that as a space of socialisation, the local area that one experienced in adolescence is influential to the development of immigration attitudes.

Intergenerational income mobility and assortative mating in Sweden
27 January 2026

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Speaker:
Professor Markus Jäntti, Professor of Economics, Stockholm University

(Joint work with Jesper Roine of the Stockholm School of Economics)

Intergenerational income mobility is mostly studied by examining the association of fathers' and sons' (long-run) labour earnings. Broadening from this narrow focus, we demonstrate that in Sweden, both the level and trend in intergenerational mobility varies by both population -- father/mother/both parents against sons/daughters/all offspring -- as well as income concept. We explore the welfare implications of both inter- and intragenerational mobility and, once family incomes have been introduced, assortative mating. We further conduct some explorative analysis of policy changes with potential to affect patterns of assortative mating.

Inequality values as excess shares
20 January 2026

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Speaker:
Professor Anthony Shorrocks, Visiting Professor, LSE III

Inequality researchers are severely hampered by the inability to interpret inequality values in an intuitive way. Yet a simple solution has been overlooked. If a resource is shared between one rich person and n equally poor people, the value of the Gini coefficient corresponds to the share of the rich person over and above their “fair share”. This reinterpretation in terms of excess shares may be regarded as applying a new measuring scale or “metric” to Gini values. The same procedure can be applied to other inequality measures, offering the prospect of reviving interest in families of inequality indices which have fallen out of favour over the past 50 years despite their attractive properties.

Poverty without poverty line
Tuesday 21 January 2025

Speaker: Dr Olivier Sterck, Associate Professor, University of Antwerp & University of Oxford

Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesdays, 12.30 to 1.30pm

Upcoming Inequalities Seminars

Previous Inequalities Seminars

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

Autumn Term 2022

Winter Term 2022

Autumn Term 2021

Winter Term 2021

Autumn Term 2020

Winter Term 2020

Autumn Term 2019

Winter Term 2019

2018

2017

2016