Equality
Chapter 2 - Society
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Welcome to the Equality page
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Many studies suggest that inequality matters quite a lot to health and well-being, life expectancy and crime, social mobility, social capital, and all manner of social dysfunction. When correlations occur repeatedly, when profoundly unequal societies also reveal themselves to be profoundly dysfunctional, we ought to begin to see a pattern and take notice.
Studies of our primate cousins make it clear that hierarchies of domination are unsuitable for the creatures on the bottom. They induce stress, inflammation, a weakened immune response, and other changes that adversely affect health. Our human ancestors have figured much of that out for themselves many thousands of years ago, prompting them to resist and reverse the dominance hierarchies their nonhuman ancestors endured.
Resisting hierarchy is part of who we are as a species. But we are also better than any other at building it back up, using the vaunted wisdom of Homo sapiens to construct regimes of hierarchy and domination of a scale and intensity unknown in the animal kingdom.
| Content source |
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| Equality - D. McMahon - Ithaka - 2024 |
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Core ideas
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The equity – equality paradox
Equality always implies inequality. Dividing a cake into equal parts will never fully meet individual needs.
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Equity
Etymology
From Latin aequitatem (nominative aequitas) "the uniform relation of one thing to others, equality, conformity, symmetry. By making exceptions to the law and so treating people unequally for a time, one aims to correct for past injustice and give targeted groups more of a stake. The Latin word also meant "a quiet, tranquil state of mind; moderation, evenness of temper."
Meaning
Equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and adjust to imbalances.
Equity is the practice of accounting for the differences in each individual's starting point when pursuing a goal or achievement and working to remove barriers to equal opportunity by providing support based on their unique needs.
In the context of the economy, 'equity' refers to the value of a company being divided into equal parts, each owned by the shareholders. It's also used to describe one of these equal parts into which the value of a company is divided.
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Equality
Etymology
From Latin aequalitatem (nominative aequalitas) "equality, similarity, likeness" (also sometimes with reference to civil rights), from aequalis "uniform, identical, equal"
Meaning
Equality means providing the same to all.
Equality is the idea that the rules of the game are the same for everyone. Its goal is to create an equal chance for everyone to achieve wealth, social prestige, or power, not bothered by irrelevant considerations such as race, religion, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or other factors that may hinder some of the competitors' opportunities at success.
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The paradox
Things that are the same in all their parts are not equal, they are identical. People are not identical, we can only be equal.
When dividing resources, is it fair
- to give identical resources to all, because we are equal?
- to give (unequal) resources to some, who are identical?
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Deep dive
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The great compression
The Great Compression , a significant period in the economic history of the United States, refers to a time of substantial wage compression that began in the early 1940s. This era saw a drastic reduction in economic inequality, as evidenced by wealth and income distribution, between the rich and poor, compared to previous periods. The term was coined by Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo in a 1992 paper. Analysis of personal income tax data reveals that the compression ceased in the 1970s and has since reversed in the United States.
Economist Paul Krugman attributes the compression not only to progressive income taxation but also to other policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and World War II. From about 1937 to 1947, highly progressive taxation, the strengthening of unions, and the wage and price controls of the National War Labor Board during World War II, increased the income of the poor and working class and decreased that of top earners. Krugman argues that these explanations are more compelling than the conventional Kuznets curve cycle of inequality driven by market forces because a natural change would have been gradual and not sudden as the compression was.
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(The) 1%
It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top.
| Content source |
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| J. Stiglitz - Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - Vanety Fair - 2011 |
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Do you want to know more?
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| Our world in data |
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| Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. |
| https://ourworldindata.org/ |
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| Income inequality |
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| The Gini coefficient is based on the comparison of cumulative proportions of the population against cumulative proportions of income they receive, and it ranges between 0 in the case of perfect equality and 1 in the case of perfect inequality. S80/S20 is the ratio of the average income of the 20% richest to the 20% poorest; P90/P10 is the ratio of the upper bound value of the ninth decile (i.e. the 10% of people with highest income) to that of the first decile; P90/P50 of the upper bound value of the ninth decile to the median income; and P50/P10 of median income to the upper bound value of the first decile. |
| https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart |
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| The Systems Transformation Hub |
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| The Systems Transformation Hub aims to provide strategic and systematic guidance, supporting the European institutions and Member States in policy analysis, development, policy learning, and agile decision support. |
| https://www.systemiq.earth/systems-transformation-hub/ |
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