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This paper discusses the 'engendering' of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), and the role of organisations such as Oxfam in supporting this process, at the country level and internationally. It is based on an evaluation assessing the extent to which Oxfam Great Britain's (GB's) work on PRSPs has been mainstreaming perspectives on gender and diversity. The evaluation was part of a larger gender mainstreaming evaluation, demonstrating Oxfam's strong commitment to promoting gender equality in its development work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Without achieving gender equality for girls in education, the world has no chance of achieving many of the ambitious health, social and development targets it has set for itself. (UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, March 2005) [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including health disparities, health economics, and health financing.

The article presents the author's commentary on the theories of development underlying the Educational Sector Policy paper of the World Bank. The two main aims of education according to the paper are as follows: contribution of education to the achievement of social justice and role of education in economic development. The author criticizes the strategies derived from the new theories of development which link the achievement of economic development and social justice. According to him, it does not follow from the newer theories of development that equality will contribute to economic development. He also claims that the paper makes the methodological mistake of attempting to derive policies directly from descriptive social theory.

Italy is famous worldwide for its co-operative sector, and this firm model has proven to be efficacious in redressing many social inequalities over the past two centuries. This paper aims to examine how local communities in diverse regions have adapted this traditional form to the contemporary trend of bottom-up community development processes. Furthermore, the paper compares the Italian initiatives with the international literature on community co-operatives and assesses to which extend similarities and differences are viewable. The qualitative analysis considers 7 co-operatives in various areas of Italy, and analyses result from 15 semi-structured interviews with managers. Findings show the intense work undertaken before the co-operatives' registration, the negotiation of purposes and objectives with external partners, how founder groups have a key role in determining each firm's approach to local development, and how further networks with external subjects are deeply influence the co-operatives' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for papers for the meeting titled "Annual Allied Social Sciences Association Meetings" to be held on January 4-6, 2008 at New Orleans, Louisiana with a theme about inequality, democracy, and the economy. The Association for Social Economics members and nonmembers are encouraged to submit proposals for the New Orleans ASE program. The papers can be send by email of 300 words or less by May 1, 2007 to John Davis of University of Amsterdam and Marquette University. Guide questions are also included.

Health financing equity analysis rarely goes below the state level in India. This paper assesses the equity and effectiveness of public spending on health in the state of Odisha. Using district-level public spending data for the first time, it sheds light on the incidence of public spending by geography and by type of services. There are three key findings. First, it identifies the weak link between district spending and district need, proxied by poverty rates or lagging sectoral outcomes, highlighting the potential for a more needs-based approach to public resource allocation. Second, the results indicate that at the household level health spending by the state is not pro-poor, especially in public hospitals, underscoring the need to improve access to care for the bottom 40% at these facilities. Third, an exhaustive analysis of micro-level treasury data brings into focus the importance of reforming public finance data systems to support evidence-based policy at the sub-state level. Significant district-wise variation in key health financing and equity indicators, combined with growing policy interest in the district level, underscore the utility of further empirical work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to technologies, infrastructures and their related services are essential for raising global living standards and human well-being. Several of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deal with providing access to technologies and service infrastructures to the share of global population so far excluded. At the same time, the SDGs, foremost SDG 10 on reducing inequalities within and among countries, promote a more equitable world, both in terms of inter- as well as intra-national equality. To support monitoring progress towards the SDGs, this paper aims to (1) improve measures of international inequality in terms of basic technologies and infrastructure services associated with the SDGs by explicitly taking into account non-access; and (2) to estimate the international inequality of selected SDG technologies and infrastructure services. It does so by advancing, testing, and applying improved measures of international inequality. The paper shows the discrepancies between accounting and not accounting for non-access from an inequality perspective for international inequality for selected technologies (e.g. mobile phones) and infrastructure services (e.g. electricity). By accounting for non-access on the national level, international inequality estimates are improved. Accounting for non-access leads to changes in country rankings, which the development community uses to measure progress in human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to interrogate the meaning of Zimbabwe's four decades of independence after the country attained it in 1980. We argue that the creation of and continued dominance by a new class of elites in the country is the principal reason why many citizens remain entrenched in poverty. Based on a desktop study of the evidence and cases of issues surrounding dichotomies of sectors – urban versus rural, formal versus informal, low-income versus high-income – the paper engages thematic and content analysis. The findings reveal that inequality remains a staunch force that the new president must fight. The country has rich mining deposits, yet inequality remains high. Good governance and progressive distributive policies are suggested as possible measures to rescue the country from gross inequalities currently bedevilling it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measures of association play a central role in the social sciences to quantify the strength of a linear relationship between the variables of interest. In many applications researchers can translate scientific expectations to hypotheses with equality and/or order constraints on these measures of association. In this paper a Bayes factor test is proposed for testing multiple hypotheses with constraints on the measures of association between ordinal and/or continuous variables, possibly after correcting for certain covariates. This test can be used to obtain a direct answer to the research question how much evidence there is in the data for a social science theory relative to competing theories. The stand-alone software package 'BCT' allows users to apply the methodology in an easy manner. The methodology will also be available in the R package 'BFpack'. An empirical application from leisure studies about the associations between life, leisure and relationship satisfaction and an application about the differences about egalitarian justice beliefs across countries are used to illustrate the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how belonging and aspirations interact to shape marginalized young Colombians' strategies for upward social mobility. Recent literature has argued that in the context of inequality and poverty, social mobility is constrained by people's inability to aspire to and/or achieve their aspirations. The majority of this literature is from the economics field and looks at the way poverty acts as a brake on social mobility. This paper provides an additional interdisciplinary analysis of the role of 'belonging' (to places and social class) in influencing aspirations of young Colombians. Findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork with young people from two marginalized neighborhoods in Cartagena. It is argued that aspirations are closely linked to belonging and the extent to which young people feel integral to or distanced from their localities. Using a Bourdieusian perspective, the paper examines how belonging is developed and how it influences behavior, orientations and future prospects. This approach generates insights into young people's apparent low aspirations beyond the explanation of internal behavioral poverty traps. In so doing, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of how societal structures limit aspiration development and achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on various papers relating to crime and community published in the journal Sociological focus. Each of the papers published follow contributions in an important theoretical or empirical way to one's understanding of community, inequality and crime. Here, they outline the key issues addressed in the articles and offer the journal's sense of the directions for future research suggested by the papers. Observing these disparate patterns, author Jeanette Covington identifies the contradictions in the inequality-crime literature as reflecting largely a theoretical problem. She argues that underlying the Blaus' thesis is a conception of race in which the "black psyche" is considered as different in kind from that of whites. She notes, however, that there is no empirical support for either the notion that there is a distinctive black psychology, or the assumption that racial stratification is associated with a unique black psychological reaction of frustration the mechanism assumed in the inequality-crime literature to lead to greater black violence.

This paper examines how political priority was generated for comprehensive reforms to address inequitable access to high-quality primary health care (PHC) in Romania. We apply John Kingdon's model of political agenda setting to explore how the convergence of problems, solutions, and political developments culminated in the adoption of a government program that included critical PHC reforms and approval of a results-based funding instrument for implementation. We draw on a review of the gray and peer-reviewed literature and stakeholder consultations, and use content analysis to identify themes organized in line with the dimensions of Kingdon's model. We conclude this paper with three lessons that may be relevant for generating political priority for PHC reforms in other contexts. First, national PHC reforms are likely to be prioritized when there is political alignment of health reforms with the broader political agenda. Second, the availability of technically sound and feasible policy proposals makes it possible to seize the political opportunity when the window opens. Third, partners' coordinated technical and financial support for neglected issues can serve to raise their priority on the political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Are Citizenship Tests Necessarily Illiberal?', Michael Blake argues that difficult citizenship tests are not necessarily illiberal, so long as they test for the right things. In this paper, I argue that Blake's attempt to square citizenship tests with liberalism fails. Blake underestimates the burdens citizenship tests impose on immigrants, ignoring in particular the egalitarian claims immigrants have on equal social membership. Moreover, Blake's positive justification of citizenship tests – that they help justify immigrants' coercive voting power – both neglects the fact that such tests are coercively imposed on immigrants and that the citizenship test Blake envisions does little to help ensure immigrants' votes are legitimate. Citizenship tests thus aren't, even in principle, a way of protecting citizens from unjustified coercive power. They are, even under favourable circumstances, an illiberal way of obstructing immigrants' quest for social equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I respond to the central claims presented in Samuel Moyn's influential book, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Moyn argues that human rights have the following features: they are powerless to combat growing material inequality; they share key characteristics with neoliberalism; they make only minimalist or sufficientarian demands and therefore are not enough to achieve the equality demanded by justice. He suggests, in particular, that Henry Shue's Basic Rights exemplifies these features. My response argues that Moyn does not accurately present the core conceptual and normative characteristics of human rights, nor does he succeed in implicating Shue's conception in his critique. I suggest that Moyn's own ideas about global justice are incompletely developed, including his views about the scope, content, and distributive principles that should guide an account of global justice. Finally, I argue that, even though human rights are only part of an account of global justice, nonetheless they do provide reasons to limit socioeconomic inequality. This point is exemplified by the claim that a human right to democracy requires limits on material inequality in order to prevent power hierarchy. In short, I agree with Moyn that human rights are not enough by themselves to achieve global justice, but I reject his multi-pronged critique of human rights, specifically his claim that they imply no constraints on socioeconomic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to research whether the varieties of capitalism impact the relationship between social capital and inequality in developed economies (coordinated and liberal economies) and Latin America (hierarchical economies) in the period from 2000 to 2016. To do that, the study uses a panel analysis of developed economies and Latin America, that is, a fixed effect panel static analysis. The model includes one dependent variable (Gini index) and ten independent variables (generalised trust, informal economy, years of schooling, union density, market capitalization, annual gross domestic product, gross domestic product per capita, health expenditure, feminine labour force, and gross capital). The findings show that the relationship between inequality and social capital is negative and significant and that hierarchical economies (Latin America) amplified such a relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a computational framework to analyse the equilibrium dynamics of exploitation and inequality in accumulation economies with heterogeneous labour. A novel index is presented which measures the intensity of exploitation at the individual level and the dynamics of the distribution of exploitation intensity is analysed. Various taxation schemes are analysed which may reduce exploitation or inequalities in income and wealth. It is shown that relatively small taxation rates may have significant cumulative effects on wealth and income inequalities. Further, taxation schemes that eliminate exploitation also reduce disparities in income and wealth but in the presence of heterogeneous skills, do not necessarily eliminate them. The inegalitarian effects of different abilities need to be tackled with a progressive education policy that compensates for unfavourable circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relationship between distributive justice and vocational education. It examines both the way that the very notion of a vocational education carries implications for distributive justice and how the meaning of justice itself might be shifting towards one of inclusion. The argument, which is based on the recent work of Bernard Williams (2002), may have some general explanatory and predictive power particularly relevant to the educational uses of certain terms. 'Vocational' is used in the paper as an exemplar. It is argued that consideration of what is just in any liberal society involves weighting the application of principles in ways that respect the shared values of that society. These values are communicated partly through hopeful myths that enable social cohesion. One such set of myths currently serves to sustain some degree of hope that emphasis on the vocational in education will enable distributive justice. Increasingly however experience of and research within vocational education reveals some truths that challenge these myths. Neither myth nor truth floats free of structure, however, and the paper also includes discussion of the ways that structure, truth and myth are related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To whom do we owe obligations of socio-economic justice? How are such obligations generated? Internationalism denotes a range of approaches to these questions. This paper examines Andrea Sangiovanni's—an internationalist—response to these questions. Sangiovanni argues that we owe egalitarian obligations only to those in the state, and that egalitarian obligations are generated through relationships of 'reciprocity'. His is a 'reciprocity-based internationalism' (RBI). RBI has two components—one normative and another empirical. In this paper, I will assume the normative component, but reject its empirical component. My rejection of the empirical component has normative implications for RBI, which generate egalitarian obligations beyond the state. In other words, my revision of RBI is an argument in favour of international egalitarian obligations not generated through cosmopolitanism, but through internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I explain the nature of the education and engagement of young Chinese minorities in north China under Japanese occupation during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Second, I examine what influence the occupation policy of Japanese puppet government had on forming Hui identity. During the Republic of China, the minority Hui were facing social inequality. Japan focused on the affairs of the Hui people and implemented a policy that gave them preferential treatment to advance the division and control of China. In 1938 the General Federation of Islam in China was founded under the Provincial Government of the Republic of China to advance the "Muslim campaign" of the Japanese Army. Its objectives were to support the regime, oppose communism, and the Young Muslim Association of China was established, training of young Muslims for military service. But young Hui trained in such association often rebelled against the Japanese occupation, and the Hui people who received modern education used education as a tool to fulfill their own goals instead. Therefore, the Hui established a dual identity of being Muslim and Chinese, and they chose to side with China rather than Japan. This study explores the complex process by which the minority Hui formed their double identity. This study is based primarily on literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) era, considerable progress was made toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) health indicators. Despite these achievements, many countries failed to meet the MDG target levels, between-country inequalities in health outcomes did not improve, and many countries making progress in average indicator levels did so while at the same time seeing increasing within-country inequalities. We build on the existing literature documenting levels and trends in health inequalities by expanding the number of data-points under focus, and we contribute to this literature by analyzing the extent to which inequalities in child health outcomes are related to socioeconomic inequalities, and to aggregate income growth. The objective of this paper is to examine long-run trends in average population levels and within-country inequalities for two child health outcomes—the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and stunting—in 102 countries across 6 regions. We find that only about a third of countries in our sample managed to both reduce U5MR levels and inequalities, and only a quarter did so for stunting. The fact that inequality in service coverage seems to follow a more favorable trend than inequality in health outcomes suggests that policies aiming to reduce health inequities should not only foster more equitable service coverage but also focus on the social determinants of health. Moreover, there is no strong correlation between changes in health inequalities and income growth, suggesting that income generating development policies alone will typically not suffice to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the inequality and poverty issues of rural households in India from the perspective of a household's monthly per capita consumption expenditure using data on nearly 20,000 households. In examining these issues, the paper first sets out a model of a poverty-inequality trade-off whereby governments could choose the poverty-inequality combination they most preferred. Then the paper proceeds to examine whether there is a 'caste basis' to inequality and poverty in India or whether distributional and deprivation outcomes are 'caste blind' and entirely determined by the attributes of the individual households. Our overarching conclusion is that households' outcomes with respect to their position on the distributional ladder, or with respect to their chances of being poor, are dependent in large measure on their caste. So households from the Scheduled Castes were more likely to be in the lowest quintile of consumption, and were more likely to be poor, than high-caste Hindu households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of income inequality on individual wellbeing. The results show that those in the lowest twenty percent of income distribution have a marked reduction in wellbeing compared to the remainder. Hence, poverty is detrimental to wellbeing. The second key finding of this paper is that the existence of permanent aggregate income inequality reduces the wellbeing of individuals in other parts of income distribution, irrespective of their level of income. Income inequality is bad for everyone's wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating spatial inequalities using a single walking accessibility measure is quite challenging. In response, the paper proposes combining two accessibility measures (real and potential) to provide additional insights into the identification and mapping of spatial inequalities. The municipality of Getafe in the Madrid Metropolitan Area, Spain serves as a case study. A questionnaire, administered via face-to-face interviews, recorded the resident's walking preferences for reaching in-store retail. A gravity-based model was used to calculate real and potential accessibilities, which were combined to map four accessibility places that originate spatial inequalities: advantageous, moderately advantageous, moderately disadvantageous, and disadvantageous. The results suggest that potential accessibility values are higher than real accessibility values, and the final map shows the city centre residents (mostly seniors) benefit from the advantageous accessibility places. Disadvantageous places are mainly found in the city's periphery, where younger people live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined the relationship between determinants of governance and poverty reduction. We also investigated how female participation in the labour market helps alleviate poverty. We collected the balanced panel data of 29 countries over the period 2004–2016 from the World Bank database and Worldwide Governance Indicators database. Results indicated that robust governance is necessary for poverty reduction and that policy implementation timeliness is more likely to mitigate poverty. Moreover, the inclusion of females in the labour market and an efficient governance system contribute to enhanced well-being among the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. French sociologist and internationally renowned public intellectual Pierre Bourdieu died in 2002. He developed a remarkable capacity for critical social analysis and epistemic reflexivity. He also organized a network of progressive social scientists into the group "Raisons d'agir" and launched a publishing house of the same name to bring sociological analyses of contemporary civic issues to a broader public. Bourdieu also succeeded in developing a highly individual brand of sociology. His scholarship was a synthesis of philosophy, social anthropology and sociology underpinned by a passionate commitment to social justice. An acute interest in social inequality and the ways in which it is masked and perpetuated became an enduring contribution preoccupation that influenced his writings.

This paper lays the methodological foundations of an analytical framework that may help shed some new light on the issue of territorial inequalities in the digital economy. It opposes the recent tendency to build up an evolutionary economic geography as an alternative not only to the so-called "New Economic Geography" (namely "geographical mainstream economics") but also to the institutional economic geography. The paper advocates the development of an evolutionary and institutional approach in economic geography, which would be meso-focused. Finally, it presents some insights that highlight the heuristic potential of this approach in reappraising the territorial features of the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the place of social equity as a public-sector value in past public-sector reforms in Kenya from the mid-1980s to today. It examines how public-sector reforms exacerbate ethnic/ tribal and gender inequalities. It also explores the institutional structures put in place by the government to mitigate these inequalities. The paper finds that past reforms have promoted efficiency and economy but not social equity. The paper also finds that in place of a weak central government and a partisan judiciary, the media and nongovernmental actors have played a big role in setting the agenda for action to address ethnic/regional and gender inequalities. It recommends investment in public service education to ingrain public-sector values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ownership Society of the late twentieth century was grounded on the promise that the opening of new investment opportunities would lead to financial expansion and inclusion. It resulted, instead, in mass dispossession. In this paper, I analyze the politics of credit in order to theorize the nexus between finance and inequality, and specifically to understand whether financial inclusion can create opportunities for what we might call 'financial citizenship.' Looking at processes, internal to the financial system itself, that may give rise to the paradox of mass investment and increased inequality, and proposing a general model of the modalities through which the financial system engages with its customers, are my two main goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the interactions between social capital and production structure in their relation with regional inequality. Combining survey data with available regional databases for the EU-15, it provides a panel data analysis of multidimensional inequalities based on the idea that social capital is a fundamental factor determining its regional levels, along with the economic specialization of regions. Results confirm an inverse relation between inequality and social capital. At the same time, they highlight the positive impact of production clusters on the regional environment. Findings suggest that the joint effect of predictors is ambiguous, and may so be dependent on the different sorts of local specialization and social capital endowment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists have traditionally been much more interested in social ranking than in social equality, and have been very ready to deny social equality on the grounds that political authority was centralized. But limiting questions of equality to questions of political authority misses precisely those areas of life where the practical and operative presence or absence of equality makes most difference to the individual and to social relations - areas of life which archaeology is in fact much better equipped to explore than it is equipped to explore political institutions and organizations. The papers in this volume concern themselves not only with equality in political organization and between political organizations but with ways in which day-to-day equality is managed in the communities of the household or among particular social groups united by factors such as gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has arisen from a concern that much recent policy-related research on markets displays misogynistic tendencies. In both the media and academic accounts it would appear as though the blame for social and educational inequalities can now be laid at the door of women – particularly middle-class mothers. Through examining competing perspectives on how we might understand this attribution of blame, this paper argues that their guilt is best explained not through changes in behaviour but through the conjuncture of shifts in education policy and related research. These shifts have turned the attention of research away from the public domain of the state and the organisational and cultural attributes of schools to focus on the private domain of domestic decision-making. But the representations of these public and private domains are underpinned by unexamined gendered and ideological subtexts which have limited our powers of description and explanation. The paper concludes by suggesting strategies through which we might both address the tacit misogyny in research on markets and develop more sophisticated accounts of contemporary changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to ensure that gender issues are included in the analysis, planning, implementation, and evaluation of post-conflict reconstruction work. The normative foundation of this paper is rights-based, identifying three interrelated kinds of rights which must be guaranteed to women in the post-conflict period: the right to participate meaningfully in policy making and resource allocation; the right to benefit equally from public and private resources and services; and the right to build a gender-equitable society for lasting peace and prosperity. The paper is divided into three corresponding sections. Dimension 1 discusses women-focused activities; Dimension 2 promotes gender-aware programming; and Dimension 3 proposes ways for societies to transform gender roles. Within these dimensions, we argue that women are assets for successful reconstruction, and that failure to recognise and address gender-related impediments may undermine efforts, while purposeful efforts to strengthen gender equality may strengthen results. Thus all three complementary dimensions assert that successful post-conflict reconstruction depends on women's rights and gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From mid-1999 to mid-2001, the authors carried out a qualitative study in rural Vietnam to explore relationships between gender equity and reproductive health. One of the study's objectives was to develop culturally appropriate indicators of women's empowerment, specific to the Vietnamese context. This paper describes the process of developing, testing, and refining the empowerment indicators, presents some of the findings, and discusses the methodological challenges that need to be addressed. The paper concludes by recommending a set of Vietnamspecific domains for assessing women's empowerment in the socio-economic sphere as well as in reproductive health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss some of the health policy implications of an increasing trend in population research and in its interpretation and presentation - a trend to 'political correctness' - defined not in the popular, often derogatory, sense, but as an ideological commitment to certain principles. For one of these commitments, that to the notion of gender equality, greater strength and legitimacy is today commonly sought by tying it to other less controversial goals such as that of better health. But straining for connections between gender equality and positive health outcomes often unduly constrains the research question, the research methods, and the interpretation of the research. When health policy seeks guidance from this research, it can receive signals which are too often incomplete, silent on the many trade-offs of specific policy measures, and, ultimately, perhaps even detrimental to the very goals of gender equity and social justice from which they are derived. Examples of all these possibilities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on topics related to public policy including an analysis of errors in responses to surveys, statistical validity of the federal equality control procedure used for the Food Stamp and Aid to Families with Dependent Children programs, and racial profiling in traffic stops.

The paper examines Thomas Nagel's 'political conception' of justice that holds that the requirements of socioeconomic justice apply only among those persons who are subject to the authority of the same political institutions. The paper has two aims. The first aim is to clarify the theoretical motivation for Nagel's theory, which it identifies in what it calls the 'responsibility thesis', i.e. that inequalities may be considered as unjust only if some agents are responsible for them, and to reconstruct the account of collective responsibility that, together with the responsibility thesis, may support his substantive conclusions. The second aim is to show that Nagel's conclusions must be rejected even if the account of collective responsibility that may support it is correct. This is so, first, because the responsibility thesis cannot be defended, and second, because even if the thesis is assumed to be correct, it does not succeed in restricting the scope of the requirements of justice to fellow citizens of particular nation states. In light of Nagel's own account of the link between legitimate authority and justice, the standards of the latter ought to apply to the state system as a whole, and not to particular states, taken separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments on the data that has been collected about the inequality prevalent in Northern Ireland. Some interesting hypotheses and suggestions concerning the socioeconomic characteristics of Protestants and Catholics in the Province and the processes of educational, occupational and income attainment for each religious group has been discussed. The British census does not provide data for Northern Ireland broken down by religion but Northern Ireland has conducted its own population census since its creation through the Government of Ireland Act in 1920. Those actively engaged in examining issues of equality of opportunity in the Northern Ireland labor market are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to examine the nature and impact of the social, economic, and political changes which have undoubtedly taken place since 1971. These changes have not only been generated by civil disturbance but also by such factors as the redevelopment and suburbanization which have greatly altered the social geography of Belfast, Northern Ireland, the rapid growth in opportunities to participate in higher education and the processes of deindustrialization which are producing unemployment rates in Northern Ireland unmatched since the 1930s.

This paper is concerned with the interrelationship between sociology of education, state schooling and social class It is suggested that we need to move beyond critiques of the New Right hegemony and begin critically to explore social democratic alternatives In the paper there is an examination of the 'old sociology of education' and inequality and its take-up by policy-makers Social class was of central explanatory value in these early social democratic accounts of state schooling This is followed by an exploration of the erasure of social class, that has emanated from such diverse sources as the rise of the New Right, the emergence of new social movements, and more recently, the ascendancy of the school effectiveness/school improvement literatures Of key significance here is to argue fir the need to develop reconceptualised frameworks and empirical studies of class analysis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is presented in two parts. The first part explores the methodological and epistemological implications of working as a black, female researcher studying issues of social justice and equality in a faculty of education. It is argued that many of those researching social issues and motivated by the desire to facilitate change are faced with an apparent contradiction between a commitment to producing objective, value free research and their commitment to equality and justice. This apparent contradiction haunts them in their negotiations with gate keepers, research funders, employers, the academic community and with policy makers and other practitioners. It is argued that the contradiction is indeed only apparent and that it is based on mistaken notions of 'objectivity' and 'universal values'. I argue that as 'committed' researchers we need to move beyond such false contradictions while at the same time accepting a dual role, of empowerment and critical engagement. In part two of the paper, it is suggested that a radical humanist, critical and reflexive form of action research, one that is informed by a concern for social justice and emancipation, may be constructed that is grounded on Habermas's conception of a 'pathology of communication'. Such research would be directed at the dominant mode of academic and educational production itself. The Gramscian conception of the 'organic intellectual' is invoked in elaborating a research model that might go beyond the kind of 'simultaneous-integrated' action research that has been described by researchers such as Alison Kelly while being radically distanced from work being carried out under the rubric of 'teacher as researcher' or other possibly technicist and managerial action-research models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dilemmas posed by the analysis of working class issues in education by professional sociologists. There are two central themes in the paper. First it suggests that the inequalities experienced in the education system by working class people has been colonised by middle class academics for their own professional purposes. This colonisation has been greatly facilitated by the nature of the scholastic context itself. To globalise one's point of view in academic writing requires both freedom from the urgency and necessity of survival, and intellectual legitimacy. Working class people lack both. The paper also suggests that working class people occupy a structurally contradictory role in relation to education: on the one hand, social mobility generally requires that they be well educated. Yet if they are to succeed in the education system they have to abandon certain features of their class background. They cease to be working class at least to some degree. Other oppressed or marginalised groups in education, do not lose their defining minority identity or status by being educated: an educated woman never ceases to be a woman, an educated black person never ceases to be black, and a physically disabled person who is educated never ceases to be disabled. The structural relationship between social class and education, is fundamentally different therefore to that of gender, race and ethnicity and this issue needs to be re-assessed in educational analysis. Finally, the paper suggests that the failure to incorporate a working class perspective on educational inequalities leads to the impoverishment of academic analysis as the interests of professional academics rather than working class people dominate the agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Willis's latest article is important in highlighting unemployment at a major form of inequality but that, just as in Learning to labour, Willis's orientation is a male one and that this has the effect of marginalizing and misrepresenting the interests of women. The paper further suggests that some of Willis's recommendations are somewhat anachronistic and also too class oriented While we believe that class should be central to any analysis of unemployment, we would stress that gender the 'race' should also be central Willis, we argue, has made an attempt to broaden his analysis but this has been largely unsuccessful. The paper concludes with a critique of some of Willis's terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Geographic Inequality Under Socialism," by Roland J. Fuchs and George J. Demko. This paper competently reviews the evidence for the persistence there of spatial inequalities. Their conception of Marxism and their generalizations about the effects of socialism on inequality, are very much subject to question, however. Essentially authors share a misunderstanding with most geographers concerning the nature of Marxist theory and the work of Marxist geographers-thus Marxism is assumed to consist only of a politics, defined narrowly as the advocacy of a certain form of socialist state, one which we are supposed to believe will solve all human problems within a short time.

Early childhood education's role in increasing equality in society has been highlighted by international organizations. However, it is unclear what is meant by the concept of equality in different situations, as the meaning fluctuates and reflects the cultural political contexts in which it is embedded. In this paper, we analyse the equality discourses of local early childhood education and care (ECEC) policymakers in Finland, drawing on different conceptualizations of equality and social justice. In doing so, we show that the way in which equality is conceptualized differs – along with the suggested remedies – depending on whether the subjects of equality are adults, children at the border of an institutional setting, or children within the ECEC institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rapidly growing number of households are suffering from energy impoverishment caused by escalating electricity prices, low income, and poor housing energy efficiency. Many households are experiencing considerable hardship in paying energy bills. This manifestation of inequality has followed the global restructuring of electricity sectors, and its incidence has become widespread across Europe, the UK, the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Current policy measures generally resemble "retrospective compensation" rather than addressing the root cause of the problem. This paper argues for a new policy approach that reconfigures electricity price formation in order to address this increasingly embedded social phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic inequality in South America decreased steadily since 2002. However, as the beginning of the 2010s marked the end of the commodities boom in the region, economic inequality showed constant or even increasing rates in some of these countries. The decrease in economic inequality has often been related to the impact of the macro economic changes, like the boom of the commodity prices and the institutional reinforcement, and changes in the labor market. Therefore, the proposedhyphotesis is that productive capacity improvement of the less educated has played a key role in reducing inequality. Productive capacity takes into consideration three variables related to hard and soft skills to work, which are educational coverage, internet access and life conditions. Results show that, in addition to demand forces, the improvement of the productive capacity of the less educated is positively and significantly related to the reduction of inequality in South America in 2002–2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses General Social Survey data linked to Census data to investigate the effect of local area income and income inequality on worker well-being. Others have found a robust negative correlation between reference group income and self-reported well-being. However, in many cases the reference group is defined as a large geographic area. This paper adds to the literature in two ways. First, it considers multiple nested geographic reference groups with US data. Second, it explicitly considers income inequality in addition to the level of income. It is found that both income and income inequality are positively associated with well-being at the census tract level, but negatively associated at the county level. Further, the effect of inequality on well-being decreases as income increases at the census tract and county level, while it increases at the state level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers what happens in advanced industrial economies like that of the US, where traditional redistributive economic policies and programs have fallen out of favor, yet forces of crisis, which radicals once predicted would usher in a new, more egalitarian and democratic era, are well attenuated. It is argued that, paradoxically, as the growth potential of corporate capitalism declines and traditional redistributive mechanisms weaken, new spaces are opening up in which new, democratized forms of ownership and control of wealth are slowly emerging. After describing these developments, the paper explores the long-run possibilities and prospects their evolution may entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extraordinary growth and reduction in inequalities achieved between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s by the High Performing Asian Economies (HPAEs) — namely Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (collectively called "the four tigers"), Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — has been discussed at great length in the economic literature. However, no clear explanation has been suggested for the poor performance of other Asian economies, like India, which share the HPAEs geographical proximity and similar economic structures. This paper shows that the stark contrast between the high growth rates and declining income inequalities of HPAEs on one side, and low growth rates and stable (or rising) income inequalities of India and other Asian countries on the other side, may at least in part be explained by the different role that human capital has played in those economies between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to establish that contributions to regional theory advanced by Gunnar Myrdal exhibit high levels of explanatory power when clarifying challenges facing Germany's eastern region since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Myrdal's evolutionary institutionalist contribution is contrasted with the "convergence hypothesis" advanced by R. Barro and X. Sala.i-Martin. Challenged is their prediction that Germany's eastern region would experience relatively higher annual rates of per capita output growth, and that levels of per capita output would converge between the eastern and western regions over time. Myrdal's approach is argued superior as it allows for considering backwash and spread effects within a framework of circular and cumulative causation, emerging between Germany's western and eastern regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]