Cities, Jobs and Economic Change

This programme takes an internationally comparative, cross-disciplinary, and multidimensional approach to analysing economic and technological change, polarised labour markets, and geographic divides in education, employment opportunities, political attitudes, and cultural values. It engages quantitative and qualitative researchers to understand both broad economic processes and everyday lived experiences. 

Global Economies of Care

This programme highlights the role of care as an economic driver of value by centring the significance of feminist debates and social reproduction analysis to inequalities research. It unveils the hidden value of care right from within the household to across the global economy, from domestic and care labour to planetary care.

Opportunity, Mobility and the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality

This programme brings together interdisciplinary perspectives, ideas and findings on horizontal inequalities and intergenerational transmission of well-being. It explores how inequality of opportunity links to inequality of outcomes and intergenerational transmission (immobility): when opportunities for today’s children are very unequal, their lives as adults are bound to be very different.

Politics of Inequality

This programme explores the practices of resistance, mobilisation, and contestation which constitute a politics of inequalities from a bottom-up perspective. Research within this theme has an international and comparative focus, adopting an intersectional lens to explore collective action and everyday resistance against various social, cultural, economic and political inequalities.

Public Economics of Inequality

This programme goes beyond the measuring of income and wealth inequality by focussing on new data opportunities and methodological advances to provide a more comprehensive account of the distribution of welfare. This allows for better understanding of underlying mechanisms of inequality and for the creation of policy that tackles inequality more effectively. 

Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice

This programme analyses wealth as a fundamental driver of inequality dynamics, ranging from the global down to the urban scale. Our team examines how wealth inequality affects the politics of taxation, the entrenchment of race and gender divides, and the renewed significance of inheritance and elites. 

India Observatory

The India Observatory develops and enhances research related to India's economy, politics and society. Theme members work in collaboration with international partners for the generation and exchange of knowledge on India and its position in the world It is, especially with respect to emerging economies.

Latin American and Caribbean Inequality Review

The Latin American and Caribbean Inequality Review explores why, despite major structural economic and social change, inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean persists at exceptionally high levels. Understanding the nature, causes and consequences of Latin America’s stable high-inequality equilibrium may provide a basis for action intended to make the region more equitable. 

Measuring the Quality of Employment in Middle Income Countries

Being employed does not guarantee a basic standard of living or well-being. Therefore, it is important to measure not just the quantity of employment, but the quality of employment. The objective of this project is to re-examine existing approaches to Quality of Employment and provide a coherent theoretical framework for it. 

SOUTHMOD - simulating tax and benefit policies for development

Research under the SOUTHMOD project aims to promote the use of microsimulation models to analyse the impact of different tax-benefit policy reforms on household incomes and government revenues in the Global South. The project represents a major international collaboration between LSE, UNU-WIDER, the Southern African Social Policy Research Insights (SASPRI), and researchers from the low- and middle-income countries for which the models have been built. 

UK LIS Satellite Office

The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database is the largest available income database of harmonised microdata from approximately 50 countries, spanning five decades. The UK LIS Satelite Office aims to promote the use of the LIS databases and serve as the point of liaison between LIS and the community of LIS data users in the UK.