June 17, 2017

The IWG joined the Young Scholars Latin America Working Group at their regional convening this year. Similar to the events at Trento, the topic of discussion at this event was "Globalization and the Developing World." Over the years, Latin American countries have consistently ranked amongst the most unequal in the world. Latin America is also among the most urbanized regions of the world with many of the largest metropolitan cities in the world located in the region. Although inequality has decreased in Latin America, cities on the continent remain highly unequal places.​

June 12, 2017

In concert with the London School of Economics' Annual Inequality Conference, the IWG hosted a workshop on June 12-13. Professor Paul Segal (King’s College London), Professor Mike Savage, and Dr. Alex Teytelboym (University of Oxford) acted as mentors during the workshop. Participants at the workshop shared their own research, as well as, participating in a project that begins to map the main theories, findings, questions and resources in inequality research. This work will eventually be incorporated into the resources section of the IWG website. 

June 01, 2017

The Inequality Working Group joined a handful of other Young Scholar working groups at this year's Trento Festival to host meetings and discussions. A call for papers was issued on the topic of "Globalization in an Age of Rising Nationalism," and several young scholars were chosen to share their own work and research exploring the link between inequality and globalization.

April 27, 2017

Professor Nora Lustig (Samuel Z. Stone Professor and Director of CEQ Institute Tulane University and Nonresident Senior Fellow CGD and IAD) joined us for this webinar. The Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Institute helps conduct the fiscal incidence analysis is various countries around the world and so far the analysis has been conducted in almost 40 countries. Their objective is to measure the impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty across the world. 

As background read, our group read chapter 9  "The Fiscal Policy, Income Redistribution & Poverty" in the CEQ Handbook 2016 (CEQ Handbook). Using comparable fiscal incidence analysis, Professor Lustig's chapter examines the impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty in 29 countries. The evidence, which is from around 2010, reveals that success in fiscal redistribution is driven primarily by redistributive efforts (share of social spending to GDP in each country) and the extent to which transfers are targeted to the poor and direct taxes targeted to the rich. According to Lustig, while fiscal policy always reduces inequality, this is not the case with poverty. While spending on pre-school and primary school is pro-poor (the per capita transfer declines with income) in almost all countries, pro-poor secondary school spending is less prevalent, and tertiary education spending tends to be progressive only in relative terms (equalizing, but not pro-poor). Health spending is always equalizing.

In an era when social contracts are fraying in many countries, assessing the dynamics of fiscal redistribution is vital so please join us in learning more about fiscal policy and inequality from an expert scholar.

October 07, 2016

YSI hosted their annual plenary at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary in 2016. The title of the plenary was "Piecing Together a Paradigm." Many Young Scholars got a chance to meet in person for the first time at this event, and the Inequality Working Group hosted a series of sessions at the Plenary.

June 08, 2016

Professor Danny Dorling (University of Oxford) joined us for a webinar on the topic of visualizing global inequality. Professor Dorling is a social geographer at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Professor Dorling's latest book A Better Politics can be downloaded for free at http://www.dannydorling.org/books/betterpolitics/. A link to more of his online material can be found at http://www.dannydorling.org

February 06, 2015

On February 6th and 7th, YSI hosted a two-day workshop on inequality at the INET office in New York. The workshop welcomed students working in economic inequality to present their work and lead discussions. Branko Milanovic and James K. Galbraith joined us as mentors for the workshop.