The Growing Inequalities’ Impacts (GINI) Project

Contact: Abigail McKnight

The project looks at the long-term impacts of inequalities on social, political, cultural and economic aspects of life. The analysis deals with how the following have changed in the last 20 years (wherever possible): inequality in income, employment, wealth and education; material deprivation; family formation and breakdown; crime and punishment; political and civic participation; trust in parliament, government and other institutions. The UK team is working with five other country teams to map out a report template which will be used as the basis for completing country reports for all EU nations (excluding Cyprus and Malta), the USA, Japan, Canada and Australia. The GINI project is funded by the European Commission.

The new European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, László Andor, announced the offi cial start of the project at the Opening Conference at the London School of Economics on 19 March 2010.

Aims

The core objective of GINI is to deliver important new answers to questions of great interest to European societies: What are the social, cultural and political impacts that increasing inequalities in income, wealth and education may have? For the answers, GINI combines an interdisciplinary analysis that draws on economics, sociology, political science and health studies, with improved methodologies, uniform measurement, wide country coverage, a clear policy dimension and broad dissemination.

Methodologically, GINI aims to

• exploit differences between and within 29 countries in inequality levels and trends for understanding the impacts and teasing out
  implications for policy and institutions,
  
• elaborate on the effects of both individual distributional positions and aggregate inequalities, and
  
• allow for feedback from impacts to inequality in a two-way causality approach.
  The project operates in a framework of policy-oriented debate and international comparisons across all EU countries (except Cyprus
  and Malta), the USA, Japan, Canada and Australia.
  

Inequality impacts and analysis

Social impacts of inequality include educational access and achievement, individual employment opportunities and labour market behaviour, household joblessness, living standards and deprivation, family and household formation/breakdown, housing and intergenerational social mobility, individual health and life expectancy, and social cohesion versus polarisation. Underlying long-term trends, the economic cycle and the current financial and economic crisis will be incorporated. Politico-cultural impacts investigated are: Do increasing income/educational inequalities widen cultural and political ‘distances’, alienating people from politics, globalisation and European integration? Do they affect individuals’ participation and general social trust?

The three-year duration is split into two parts. During the first two years, four working groups will address

Inequality analysis (coordinators: Daniele Checchi and Wiemer Salverda)

Social Impacts (Brian Nolan and Abigail McKnight)

Cultural and Political Impacts (Herman van de Werfhorst and István György Tóth)

Policy Effects (Ive Marx)
These groups, comprised of Core Team members with the support of Associates, will develop the analysis and produce the four Analysis Reports.

In addition, they will, on the basis of country reports for their own six countries, develop the format to be adopted for all Country Reports. The latter will be prepared during the last of the three years.

A Mid-Term Conference serves as the linking pin between the two parts.

Expected output

GINI intends to produce:

• Review of the literature
  
• Up to 100 Discussion Papers
  
• 26 Country Reports covering 29 countries
  
• 4 Analysis Reports on Inequality, Social Impacts, Political and Cultural Impacts, and Policy
  
• 1 Final Report
  
• Dissemination booklet
  
• Database

GINI very much welcomes feedback from interested policy makers atgovernment, social partner organisations or NGOs active in the field of inequality. The GINI website features a Policy Portal.