Inequalities

Tag: politics of inequality

  • The elephant in the room of social security reform

    Lots of smart people on the left are thinking about how to create a better social security system – but I’m worried. Most seem to agree that there’s a lot wrong with Universal Credit (UC). The five-week wait, the benefits cap, the two-child limit, the Work Capability Assessment, the generally low levels of payments – […]

  • Perceptions of poverty levels: a long view

    This is a guest post by Elizabeth Clery (@liz_clery), who works with the amazing NatCen team that are responsible for the British Social Attitudes Survey. The latest British Social Attitudes report came out in July, and it pointed out a puzzle in public attitudes to poverty: Trends in poverty have remained relatively stable over the […]

  • Would more people support foreign aid & charities if they grasped the scale of global inequality?

    This is a guest post by the excellent Aveek Bhattacharya, who (like I did!) combines a PhD in Social Policy in LSE with work in the field of alcohol & public health – and is also cross-posted on his personal blog here. For all the attention that economic inequality has received in recent years, it is […]

  • Sharp softening of attitudes to benefit claimants, reveals new data

    Over the past twenty-five years, there has been a major and widely-reported change in British attitudes towards benefit claimants: simply put, we are less positive about benefit claimants than we used to be. More of us think that ‘large numbers falsely claim’ or that ‘many claimants don’t deserve help’, and attitudes have become particularly hostile […]

  • Brazilian protests: inequality and its consequences

    In this guest post, Kênia Parsons of LSE/University of New South Wales explores the continuing, inequality-fuelled protests in her home country of Brazil. A wave of protests has invaded the Brazilian streets. An increase in bus fares was the spark needed to ignite the street protests.  Brazilians are protesting about public transport, health services, education, the […]

  • Truth as a disadvantage

    If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely to be someone who’s interested in ‘truth’ – finding out the evidence on inequalities, and using this as a platform for action.  You might have protested about the way that politicians and the media perpetuate inequalities by peddling ‘myths’. You may even have dedicated your whole life to […]

  • Learning About Inequality Increases Concern, But Not Necessarily Support for Redistribution

    A puzzle: income inequality between the top 1% and the rest has surged in the last few years, yet support for redistribution among the general public has actually declined (see figure below). Do people not care about inequality, or do they not know the facts? To test this hypothesis, Ilyana Kuziemko recently conducted an online […]

  • Immigration reform without public benefits

    Any viable immigration reform proposal in the United States senate has to pass through Florida Republican Marcio Rubio. That’s why it was big news when Rubio announced his support for a bipartisan plan on the Sunday news shows, stressing that the new program would establish a pathway to citizenship but offers very little to immigrants […]

  • Justifying ‘Never-Working Families’?

    In a recent post, Lindsey Macmillan showed that “The ‘never working’ family may be an easier sound bite but it is not representative of the true situation”. Here she responds to yet another attempt to make these claims – except this time, the Government have been forced to justify their claims in a Freedom of Information […]

  • Ending the Charitable Deduction is Part of the Solution

    To balance the budget, Republicans want to raise revenue by getting rid of tax loopholes instead of raising rates. If we are getting rid of loopholes, what about eliminating the income tax deduction on charitable contributions? Ending the charitable deduction is not a popular idea for either the left or the right to embrace. The […]