Events

Peak Injustice: solving Britain's inequality crisis
Co-hosted with LSE Department of Sociology  

Monday 24 February 2025 6.30pm - 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Old Theatre, Old Building. 

Speakers: 
Professor Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford
Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive, New Economics Foundation and Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE III
Professor Kitty Stewart, Professor of Social Policy and Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE)
Polly Toynbee, Journalist and writer 

Chair:
Professor Aaron Reeves, Professor of Sociology, LSE  

Why has absolute deprivation continued to grow in the UK? What role does high inequality play in understanding how we have got to the point of peak injustice?

With child mortality rising in the UK and a majority of parents with three or more children going to bed hungry, Danny Dorling looks to the future, highlighting the challenges ahead and identifying solutions for change.

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Using microdata and microsimulations to estimate historical income distributions at high frequency: Italy, 1861-2021
Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 4 March 2025, 12.45pm – 1.45pm. In-person and online event. Room 2.06, Cheng Kin Ku Building. 

Speaker:
Professor Giovanni Vecchi, Professor of Economics, University of Rome Tor Vergata

This seminar presents a novel approach to reconstructing high-frequency historical income distributions, by combining an extensive historical microdata collection with modern microsimulation techniques. The Historical Household Budgets (HHB) project’s dataset is the largest historical micro-dataset assembled for post-Unification Italy, spanning 1861-2021 (to date, it comprises 260,000 observations, harmonized to modern survey data). The proposed approach involves constructing nationally representative datasets from historical household budgets for benchmark years, and exploring the use of static microsimulation models to fill in the gaps. This produces annual estimates of the distribution of household income, yielding not only estimates of inequality and absolute poverty indices at unprecedented temporal resolution, but also an account of gains and losses across the whole distribution. We argue that this method enables a more nuanced understanding of the distributive effects of both systemic and idiosyncratic shocks that took place in the past, revealing previously unobservable medium- and short-run distributional dynamics.

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The Political Consequences of Exposure to Inequality on Social Media: A Randomised Field Experiment 

Wednesday 5 March 2025, 12.30pm - 1.30pm. In-person and online event. Room 1.15, Cheng Kin Ku Building. 

Speaker:
Dr Melissa Sands, Assistant Professor of Politics and Data Science, Department of Government, LSE

Join us for this seminar in which Dr Melissa Sands investigates the impact of exposure to inequality on political behaviour. 

People experience economic inequality through social media. Services like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, offer users a curated window into the lives of the wealthy. The effects of this digital exposure to inequality on political behaviour are not yet understood. To fill this gap we use a placebo-controlled field experiment that randomly assigns college students to follow the Instagram account of a fellow student enjoying a luxury Spring Break vacation. The experiment, conducted at both an elite private university and a non-elite public university, reveals limited effects of the treatment on students’ political attitudes and behaviours. Suggestive evidence emerges, however, of a suppressive effect: the treatment appears to reduce participants’ willingness to act in support of taxing large inheritances, mostly notably among students from historically-disenfranchised groups. While experiencing inequality online appears to have limited effects overall, it has the potential to suppress willingness to act in favour of redistribution.

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Where do we draw the line? Exploring an extreme wealth line
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Thursday 6 March 2025 6.30pm - 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Old Theatre, Old Building. 

Speakers: 
Fernanda Balata, political economist, New Economics Foundation
Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and Professor of Law, UCLouvain, SciencesPo (Paris) 
Ingrid Robeyns, Visiting Professor, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), Chair in Ethics of Institutions, Utrecht University 
Gary Stevenson, economist and social commentator  

Chair: 
Tania Burchardt, Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), Deputy Director of STICERD, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy, LSE

Extreme wealth concentration is under the microscope as societies around the world grapple with the challenges of inequality, climate breakdown and democratic backsliding.

Yet wealth concentration continues to deepen, with some predictions that we will see the world’s first trillionaires within a decade. Is now the time to draw a line and ask: when does wealth become extreme wealth? And what risks does extreme wealth pose?

And even if we accept the moral intuition behind an “extreme wealth line”, where exactly would that line be set? Should we draw the line based on the social and environmental harms caused, or community expectations? Can we have just one line or do we need multiple lines depending on harms and contexts?

Our panel draws together leading thinkers and practitioners on the ideas to discuss the viability of an “extreme wealth line” and what it can contribute to addressing the pressing issues of our time. 

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Leaving Legacies and Liabilities: The Distribution of Wealth at Death
Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 11 March 2025, 12.45pm – 1.45pm. In-person and online event. Room 2.06, Cheng Kin Ku Building. 

Speaker:
Dr Franziska Disslbacher, Assistant Professor, Research Institute Economics of Inequality and the Department Socioeconomics, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business

Using novel administrative data from the compulsory probate process on terminal wealth in Vienna, we find that Gini indices of wealth inequality at death exceed unity, with 20–30% of decedents leaving behind debt. Investigating individual-level and institutional drivers of this distribution, we observe that the determinants of terminal wealth distribution differ from those of wealth inequality among the living. Life-cycle effects have limited explanatory power. In contrast, bequest motives are associated with higher wealth, and a marginal increase in the share of decedents who express preferences for post-mortem resource allocation reduces inequality. Homeownership is positively correlated with higher wealth (the reverse is true for care-home residency), although housing wealth does not benefit those at the bottom of the distribution. Finally, means-tested long-term care transfers significantly amplify terminal wealth inequality.

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Lived experiences and identities of welfare claimants: can Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques assist in uncovering social narratives?
Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 18 March 2025, 12.45pm – 1.45pm. In-person and online event. Room 2.06, Cheng Kin Ku Building. 

Speaker:
Professor Jane Elliott, Professorial Research Fellow, LSE III

This seminar presents a novel approach to reconstructing high-frequency historical income distributions, by combining an extensive historical microdata collection with modern microsimulation techniques. The Historical Household Budgets (HHB) project’s dataset is the largest historical micro-dataset assembled for post-Unification Italy, spanning 1861-2021 (to date, it comprises 260,000 observations, harmonized to modern survey data). The proposed approach involves constructing nationally representative datasets from historical household budgets for benchmark years, and exploring the use of static microsimulation models to fill in the gaps. This produces annual estimates of the distribution of household income, yielding not only estimates of inequality and absolute poverty indices at unprecedented temporal resolution, but also an account of gains and losses across the whole distribution. We argue that this method enables a more nuanced understanding of the distributive effects of both systemic and idiosyncratic shocks that took place in the past, revealing previously unobservable medium- and short-run distributional dynamics.

Find out more

Hope for Changemakers: Evidence and Narratives
Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 25 March 2025, 12.45pm – 1.45pm. In-person and online event. Room 2.06, Cheng Kin Ku Building. 

Speaker:
Dr Irene Guijt, Head of Evidence and Strategic Learning, Oxfam GB

In organisations seeking progressive change - whether civil society, the UN or businesses - the default rationale involves highlighting problems. What it is, who is affected, how many and how badly. To speak about the depth and extent of systemic risks in our polycrisis is not hard - it is the stuff of headlines that dominate. It is also what is communicated most by international NGOs to appeal to citizens' deep concern for others and persuade them to act for a better world. 

Despite peddling these multiple colliding disasters, the social currency of changemakers is hope. We appeal to people to have - and sustain - hope in others and organisations that they can make change happen. We suggest solutions that reduce suffering and rectify injustice. 

This hope is not false hope. Evidence of all kinds exists - ideas that have scaled, individuals that have formed alliances, institutions that have dared, quantitative data on long term upward trends. But such examples are often seen as anecdotal and seem to pale into insignificance given the extent of the polycrisis. Evidence alone - whether on crisis or transformation - does not lead to change. What makes change possible is identifying and pursuing opportunities illuminated by evidence that offers grounded hope. 

The seminar will explore two questions:

1. What evidence exists that can give grounded hope of progressive change? 
2. How do changemakers harness hope as part of their efforts? 

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Inequalities Seminar with Leili Sreberny-Mohammadi (title TBC)
Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 1 April 2025, 12.45pm – 1.45pm. In-person and online event. Room 2.06, Cheng Kin Ku Building. 

Speaker:
Dr Leili Sreberny-Mohammadi, LSE Fellow in Culture and Society, Department of Sociology

A multi-sited ethnography of the art world may include art world actors working across various professions, such as artist or dealer, and in different spaces, such as studios and galleries. The art world is informal but also very hierarchal, with power differences baked into various kinds of events such as private dinners and VIP tiers at art fairs. Art collectors occupy the top tier of this world. What methods can researchers employ to capture the lifeworld’s of art world VIPS, in the ethnographic tradition? In this talk I will discuss the various methods I have employed to “study up” in the art world and the implications and limitations for ethnography rooted in participant observation. I consider the complex researcher position in regards to wealth, the practical impact of limited research budgets and the potential strategies for occupying the spaces where art world interlocutors gather. I propose a “methodological wealth” and unpack the various ways I performed wealth in order to access elite spaces. Alongside this I will discuss the routes, through introductions and relationships with other art worlds interlocutors such as dealers and critics, that helped navigate my access to collectors.

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International Workshop on Perceptions of Inequality

The Perceptions of Inequality Research Programme at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE is delighted to announce an in-person workshop on perceptions of inequality, taking place on 20th May 2025 at LSE.  

We are accepting extended abstracts or full papers on any aspects of perceptions of inequality.

Deadline for the submission of papers or extended abstracts is 15th February, 2025.

Papers that are presented at the workshop will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization.

In case of any questions, please email j.t.dirksen@lse.ac.uk