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Tag Archives: meritocracy
The perception of inequality of opportunity – and the reality
In a guest post, Paolo Brunori – an Assistant Professor at the University of Bari, and blogger at Lavoce – summarises his new paper on the perception of inequality of opportunity in Europe, recently published in the Review of Income and … Continue reading
Educational Inequalities in Parents’ Time with Children
In a guest post, Pablo Gracia looks at inequalities in how parents spend time with their children, using his own research on the UK and Spain – and then considers the likely causes, consequences, and what this might all mean for … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged children, cross-national research, meritocracy, theorising inequality
6 Comments
So should we bother with ‘microclasses’?
Earlier in the year I published two blog posts on ‘microclasses’ – the idea that your specific occupation is an important structuring factor for the social world, beyond its position in a broader class. In this post I look back at … Continue reading
Social mobility and ethnicity in the UK
In a guest post, Neil Smith reviews the evidence – including his own – on the links between ethnicity and life chances in the UK, and why this matters for the drive to improve social mobility. In March 2012, we … Continue reading
A few things that inequality causes
Of the endless stream of papers that flash in front of my eyes every week, a large number are ‘Spirit Level style’ – that is, they look at the relationship of inequality and a ‘bad thing’ between countries/areas. If I … Continue reading
Posted in Blog posts
Tagged children, crime, effects of inequality, meritocracy, psychology, The Spirit Level, theorising inequality
6 Comments
What the public thinks of ‘fair chances’
The other week I wrote about how ‘fair chances’ are not necessarily ‘equal chances’, spurred by writings of the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson. In one of those satisfying coincidences that happen from time-to-time, these ideas helped explain a conundrum that Karen … Continue reading
When a fair chance isn’t an equal chance
Even without knowing him personally, it should be obvious from the title of his book on school choice, ‘How Not To Be A Hypocrite’, that Adam Swift is an interesting guy. This is the sort of moral philosophy that tries … Continue reading
The rise and fall of a killer chart
No single graph has captured the political imagination quite like Leon Feinstein’s killer chart. In one go, it showed that talent was no substitute for parental advantage even at early ages – and has since been endlessly used to justify … Continue reading
Two cheers for the Social Mobility Strategy
You can see what they’re trying to do. In the midst of the most savage cuts to public spending in several generations, the UK Coalition Government wants to have a positive, socially conscious message alongside all the bad news. And … Continue reading
A theory of everything? Part two.
On 6th May, the British Sociological Association and the Open University are hosting a postgraduate conference on inequality; abstracts will be accepted up until the 28th February. The main theme of the conference is on whether we need on overarching … Continue reading
Inequalities 