Inequalities

Month: November 2013

  • What are elite universities for?

    What are elite universities for?

    A perennial question in higher education is whether elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge are doing enough to recruit people from outside the traditional pool of white private-school kids. Every year we have the same conversation, and reach the same conclusion: probably not. What I didn’t realise until recently was that this debate assumes something […]

  • New Evidence on Social Isolation and Mortality

    Daniel Goldberg examines a new study establishing the link between social isolation and mortality, and asks what these findings might reveal about the pathways leading to health inequalities. In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, sociologist Robert Putnam famously declared that “[i]f you smoke and belong to no groups, it’s a toss-up statistically whether you should stop […]

  • The Immense Benefit of Applying to One More College – A Natural Experiment

    A college degree is more than a wall ornament – it represents immense financial benefits for graduates. These rewards have become even more apparent during the long financial downturn, which have seen widening wage and employment gaps between college graduates and those with only a high school degree. Studies also illustrate that getting students to […]

  • The problem of low pay

    The problem of low pay

    Low pay is a huge problem in the UK. Of the 11 million people currently living in poverty, 6 million have jobs. Some of this is due to under-employment – people who work, but can’t get full-time hours – but not all. For example, three quarters of children in working poor families have a parent […]