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At the end of this course, you will be able to:
- define core concepts related to social inequality;
- calculate and measure the extent of inequality in outcomes with, among others, the GINI-index;
- calculate and measure the extent of inequality in opportunities with, among others, the odds ratio;
- describe trends in social inequality;
- describe regional variation in social inequality;
- explain the causes and consequences of social inequality with different theoretical frameworks that start from methodological individualism and in which resources (e.g. social, cultural, economic, human capital) and rules and norms of institutions play a central role;
- engage yourself constructively in the current (policy) debates on social inequality, with special attention to discrimination and perceptions of fairness;
- explain and draw conceptual models related to social inequality that contain spurious, mediated and moderated relationships.
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Research into social stratification and social mobility has a long tradition within sociology. In this course we describe and explain the causes and consequences of social inequality. The focus is on economic, educational, political and health inequality.
We start the course with defining the core concepts. This will enable us to formulate questions related to inequality that explicate the type of inequality (inequality of distributions, inequality of opportunities), the dimension of inequality (e.g. economic, educational, political, health), between whom inequality exists (e.g. young/old, men/women, social origin groups, ethnic groups), where this inequality exists (e.g. countries, institutions) and when, in which period, this inequality exists. Students will practice in calculating different inequality measures.
With the right questions in mind and knowing how to measure inequality, we will describe inequality in outcomes and inequality in opportunities. We will describe both trends in social inequality over time and compare the level of social inequality from a cross-national perspective. When discussing questions related to social mobility, the association between social origin and social destination, we pay ample attention to the classic status attainment model and recent extensions thereof.
Inequality is not necessarily something societies need to avoid at all costs. Should we aim to avoid inequality which results from (statistical) discrimination? More generally, when is inequality judged to be unfair and why? These topics will be discussed in the final two weeks of the course.
The main aim of the course is to increase theoretical knowledge on causes and consequences of social inequality. We will explain the causes and consequences of social inequality and social mobility with theories from which we derive hypotheses in which the impact of resources and restrictions play a central role. However, the course has several methodological subsidiary aims. These methodological aims of the course are that students will learn skills to measure social inequality. Moreover, they will learn that a relationship between two social phenomena may be the result of a true causal mechanism (i.e. a causal relationship) or of a third confounding factor (i.e. a spurious relationship), and they will learn that a third factor could also explain the relationship between two social phenomena (i.e. a mediated relationship) or change the relationship between two social phenomena (i.e. a moderated relationship).
This course connects to SDG 10, Reduced Inequalities.
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