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Affirmative action in Brazil’s higher education systemEvidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher...
Reducing inequalities is now at the forefront of the global agenda. Inequality has been called one of the defining challenges of our time and a growing body of evidence that supports this assertion continues to accumulate.
While much of inequality studies focus on measuring inequalities or assessing the impact that they have on key development outcomes such as stable and democratic governance, health and education, or economic growth, this project aims to study and learn from the policy efforts and experience of countries fighting inequality, with particular attention to experiences from the Global South. By doing so, it hopes to offer key lessons and frameworks for reducing inequalities around the world.
The project will focus specifically on efforts to reduce group-based or identity-based inequalities - sometimes called horizontal inequalities - in developing countries. These are inequalities within and between groups based on ethnic, religious, racial, and other socio-culturally defined divisions. They include inequalities of income, access to political rights, health and education, and so on.
‘Addressing group-based inequalities' contains three main areas of research:
Together, these research areas will highlight the social transformations, political coalitions, and policy frameworks that have succeeded at reducing inequality, and those that have not. It will build a cross-national, longitudinal database to broaden understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in affirmative action policy. And, it will shed light on the ways in which social inequalities affect migrant populations.
All papers, data and opinion pieces relating to this project, as well as opportunities to engage will be available on this webpage.
This project centrally addresses SDG 10 (reduce inequality within and among countries). Components of the project speak directly to SDG 16 (effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions), and SDG 5 (gender inequality).
Focal point: Rachel Gisselquist
Core researchers: Simone Schotte, Min Jung Kim, Gülce Safak Özdemir, Anustup Kundu, Tharcisio Leone, Satu Kuitunen, Melissa Samarin, Durgesh Solanki
Project support: Iina Kuuttila
Communications: Timothy Shipp
The Sustainable Development Agenda
This project builds on previous work completed under The politics of group-based inequalities - measurement, implications, and possibilities for change
Evidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher...
In a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This...
Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing...
Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university in Brazil that splits students into two classes, we apply a regression discontinuity design to study the effect of class allocation on academic performance and...
This study adds to knowledge on the role of politicians’ and voters’ identities in influencing policy-making in societies marked by ethnic inequality. The outcome we investigate is the initiatives and policies targeting Indigenous populations in the...
The extant literature on status-signalling primarily adopts Veblen’s theory of class to caste and racial identities. This study aims to adopt a more suitable theoretical lens that is more relevant not only for class identities, but also for other...
Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach for addressing group-based inequalities along ethnic, religious, and racial lines (e.g. horizontal inequalities). It is adopted...
A plethora of work has been done on the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, virtually none of the previous cross- country macro studies have investigated the impact of aid on social cohesion. Yet, in order to promote the achievement of the targets...
This paper provides a systematic review of quantitative literature investigating the success of affirmative action policies in addressing socio-economic inequalities between ethnic groups in education and employment. We focus on two of the most...
Despite the good intentions behind affirmative action policies to mediate ‘horizontal inequalities’ between ethnic groups, the evidence on their effectiveness remains open to debate. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature...
This study examines how, why, and under what conditions marginalized women of customary communities can contribute and gain access to the benefits of the social forestry programme. We found that customary communities’ dependence on forest resources...
Uganda’s post-colony continues to be haunted by the colonial logic of ethnicity. This logic has mapped the country’s post-colonial political landscape as a terrain on which spirals of ethnic-based conflicts and violence are the norm. Because colonial...
The paper examines the existing state of reservations, more specifically, reservation policies and reservations for government jobs for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in India. It discusses the progression and ramifications of these policies and...
Early in October 2022, international and Colombian researchers gathered together for three days at the UNIANDES campus, located at the foot of the...
For several decades, UNU-WIDER has actively worked on pathfinding and groundbreaking research on inequalities. We host one of the most extensive...
The federal character principle is Nigeria’s primary formula for mitigating horizontal inequality and conflict in this chronically fractured society. Designed to guarantee inter-group inclusion in the conduct and composition of governmental...
Malaysia provides for interesting paradoxes. Poverty was reduced by adopting a horizontal perspective to policy planning through affirmative action targeting one ethnic group lagging economically in society. However, outcomes of affirmative action...
Standardization was the scheme that replaced meritocracy in Sri Lanka education, with positive discrimination to increase the majority Sinhalese community’s university enrolment. It did so by minimizing better-qualified minority Tamils’ university...
This paper analyses the land tenure reform that took place in Mexico in 1992 and its PROCEDE programme (Ejido Rights Certification Programme). It considers the counter-agrarian reform’s objectives, the context in which it was proposed, and the...
Policy frames in Brazil have long run up against conflicting visions and understandings about the causes and consequences of group-based inequality. This paper argues that a class-based lens has dominated the social protection framework. In recent...
The affirmative action policy in India came into practice because of the generations of struggle undergone by the untouchable castes and other backward classes, who were historically excluded from education and administration. As society changed, it...
Economic, social, and political inequalities are at the forefront of today’s public debate. While governments around the world have made conscious efforts to promote social inclusion, and major progress in fulfilling basic needs has been witnessed...
Viet Nam has achieved remarkable economic growth and poverty reduction since the Doi Moi. However, ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority do not benefit equally from the national economic progress. The proportion of poor households that are ethnic...
Capital spending on infrastructure presents a significant counter-cyclical tool, however contested it might be in a society as unequal as South Africa. The history of racial capitalism, race-based exclusion from economic participation, and an...
Afghanistan is the world’s newest nowhere, a predicament that will shape the evacuation and resettlement prospects for millions of people for the...
This paper analyses the political economy of women’s-empowerment-related policy-making in India through a re-examination of the context of both the genesis and closure of a major programme, Mahila Samakhya. Mahila Samakhya, which embodied feminist...
This paper adds to knowledge on the role of politicians’ and voters’ identities in influencing policy-making in societies marked by ethnic inequality.The outcome we investigate is the initiatives and policies targeting Indigenous populations in the...
The subject of this paper is health and ethnic inequalities in Mozambique, with special reference to leprosy. It is argued that the health policies and strategies adopted in the colonial and post-colonial periods led to an unequal distribution not...
The Omicron variant resulted in a third major wave of Covid-19 in India, with the number of cases exceeding those in the second wave, albeit causing...
This paper provides a broad overview of the meaning of affirmative action and its intended and unintended impacts. The paper is a literature review and does not make any arguments specifically for or against affirmative action but describes the broad...
Affirmative action in higher education may lead to mismatch, a situation where students benefiting from preferential admission struggle with their college-level work because of poor pre-college academic preparation. In the United States, those...
It is widely accepted that the distribution of power between ethnic groups within a country plays a key role in major social, political, and economic outcomes. Researchers working on the topic have various measures of ethnic dominance and exclusion...
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Part of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Migration is an inherent feature of human history. A rich literature considers the experiences of global migrants across diverse environments. This special issue explores such experiences with a focus on inequality between migrants and host...
In a 2017 UNU-WIDER project, ‘Forced migration and inequality’, one of us collaborated on a comparison of Afghan and Vietnamese refugee resettlement across four Western countries. In the light of the Taliban return to power in August 2021, we revisit...
This note provides an overview of available cross-country data on ethnic conflict, tensions, and protests. First, it documents the steps taken in the selection of 16 different relevant data sources, before they are briefly described, and their...
Community support is a critical source to sustain livelihoods in the Global South. At the same time, these practices can exhibit unequal dynamics such as disincentives, hierarchies, or adverse inclusion of individuals. However, an understanding of...
A plethora of work has been done on the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, virtually none of the previous studies has investigated the impact of aid on social cohesion. Yet, in order to promote the achievement of the targets in SDG 16, donors and...
Peers play an essential role in cognitive and non-cognitive skills formation. Ordinal rank may also change incentives and environment, impacting students’ efforts. Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university...
What is the effect of gender priming on solidarity behavior? We explore a two-player solidarity game where players can insure each other against risk of losses. We test this experimentally in a developing country setting, the Philippines. We consider...
Using admission lotteries and registry data linking labour market outcomes, we study the effect of a vocational training programme focused on disadvantaged individuals in Brazil. The intensive programme is an 18-month classroom training coupled with...
The purpose of this article is to provide new evidence about the sources of regional income inequalities in Brazil along the wage distribution, taking into account the regional differentials in purchasing power. We use a unique and recent regional...
Community or interpersonal support as a critical source of livelihood sustenance in the Global South can exhibit unequal dynamics. An understanding of these practices is primarily tied to the conceptual space of poverty or small communities. Less is...
Caste in India plays an instrumental role in determining access to education, jobs, public spaces, and social networks. For instance, despite state...
I recently spoke to Catherine Gladwell, who is the Director and Founder of Refugee Education UK (formerly Refugee Support Network) and one of the...
This paper presents a framed field experiment on ecological altruism in Mindoro, Philippines. Behavioural differences between ethnic groups in Mindoro—the Tagalogs and the Mangyans—were investigated. We designed a two-part donation task (i.e...
Millions of South Africans in thousands of demonstrations have protested the unequal allocation of public services. Despite the African National Congress’s promise to reduce the disparities generated by apartheid, the level of public services remains...
Among the many things said about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the description by the President of the UN General Assembly’s 70th...
Theme: 2019-23, Transforming societies