The Inequality Mirror: Using a Student Survey to Teach Social Stratification

Social inequality is a central theme in sociology study plans (both in research and education), but it is often one of the most difficult topics to teach. This article presents an innovative student-centered strategy for teaching social inequality that uses a survey to collect data on students’ socioeconomic characteristics and perceptions of inequality. To stimulate reflection and discussion on the social mechanisms that reproduce inequality, this information is subsequently presented to them in conjunction with a comparative analysis to general population data. The exercise seeks to make social inequality less abstract for students by involving them in the research process and by using data relative to their own lives and families. Ultimately, the strategy boosts students’ sociological imagination and their capacity for critical thinking by encouraging them to see the connections between individual biographies and broader social forces.

How Does Actual Inequality Shape People’s Perceptions of Inequality? A Class Perspective

While some scholars suggest that awareness of income inequality is strongest when the actual level of inequality is high, others find that individuals’ awareness of income inequality is largely unresponsive to actual inequality. In this article, we argue that individuals in different social class positions often respond to the actual levels of income inequality distinctively, and therefore a class perspective is essential in understanding how actual inequality and people’s perceptions of it are associated. Using data from the social inequality modules of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP, 1992, 1999, and 2009) as well as the World Income Inequality Database ( https://www.wider.unu.edu/ ) and the World Inequality Database ( https://wid.world/ ), we consider how actual inequality interacts with social class to shape people’s perceptions of income inequality across 64 country-years between 1992 and 2009. We find that overall, perceptions of inequality are higher among the working class and lower among salariats. However, cross-nationally and over time, as the actual level of inequality increases, working classes become less critical toward inequality, whereas salariats become more critical. The actual level of inequality itself has no impact on people’s discontent toward it. This creates a counterbalancing effect that obscures the aggregate relationship between rising inequality and people’s perceptions of it.

Perceptions of inequality and intolerance “in the air”: Development and initial validation of the Diversity Climate Scale

Diversity climate is associated with numerous outcomes across psychological, physical, and occupational domains. The Diversity Climate Scale (DCS) was created to measure diversity climate perceptions among individuals with diverse and complex social identities, with a range of importance ascribed to those identities, and across diverse contexts (proximal and distal environments). The DCS was constructed and examined across four separate studies. Study 1 presents the development of the scale, preliminary factor structure, and convergent validity. Studies 2 and 3 confirmed the factor structure of the DCS and established the convergent and divergent validity with increasingly generalizable samples. Study 4 extended these analyses with a community sample, examined the predictive validity of the measure, and demonstrated that favorable proximal and distal diversity climate differed significantly across groups with different constellations of marginalized identities and differences in the importance ascribed to those identities. When controlling for lifetime discrimination, perceiving a more positive proximal climate was consistently associated with decreased depressive symptoms and increased life satisfaction, while perceptions of distal climate interacted with proximal climate and discrimination to predict depressive symptoms and life satisfaction. Applications of the DCS and considerations for future research are discussed.

How democracy alters our view of inequality and what this means for wellbeing

Income inequality is associated with poor health when economic disparities are especially salient. However, political institutions may alter this relationship because democracies (as opposed to autocracies) may be more inclined to frame inequalities in negative rather than positive ways. Living in a particular political system potentially alters the messages individuals receive about whether inequality is large or small, good or bad, and this, in turn, might affect whether beliefs about inequality influence health. Further, media coverage of economic inequality may negatively affect health if it contributes toward the general perception that the gap between rich and poor has gone up, even if there has been no change in income differentials. In this study, we explore the relationship between democracy, perceptions of inequality, and self-rated health across 28 post-communist countries using survey and macro-level data, multilevel regression models, and inverse probability weighting to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated. We find that self-rated health is higher in more democratic countries and lower among people who believe that inequality has risen in the last few years. Moreover, we observe that people in democracies are more likely to learn about rising inequality through watching television and that when they do it has a more harmful effect on their health than when people in autocracies learn about rising inequality through the same channel, suggesting that in countries where there is less trust in the television media learning about rising inequality is not as harmful for health. Our results indicate that while democracies are generally good for well-being, they may not be unambiguously positive for health. This does not mean, of course, that inequality is good for health nor that, on average, autocracies have better health than democracies; but rather that being more aware of inequality can negatively affect wellbeing Key messages While democracies are generally good for well-being, they may not be unambiguously positive for health. Being more aware of inequality can negatively affect wellbeing.

Ethnicity, Exclusion, and Exams: Education Policy and Politics in Burundi from the Independent Republics to the Civil War (1966–1993)

Education policy can embed ethnic inequalities in a country. Education in Burundi, with its historically exclusive political institutions and education, represents an important case for understanding these interactions. In this article, I interview twelve Burundians about how they experienced and perceived ethnicity and politics in their schooling from 1966 to 1993. I argue that education contributed to tangible and perceived social hierarchies based on ethnic inequalities. I show that this exclusion reflected both overt and covert policy goals, through proxies used to identify ethnicity in schools and through the exclusive nature of national exams at the time, which promoted members of the Tutsi minority at the expense of the majority Hutus. This study has implications for understanding how perceptions of inequality in education manifest as grievances against the state. It sheds light on the importance of understanding covert education policy as a potential mechanism for generating exclusion and contributing to conflict.

Perceptions of Inequality and Subjective Well-Being: Connections with Political Orientation and Self-Actualization

This study was conducted via the MTurk (online) platform. A total of 301 participants (72.4% between 18 and 40 years old, 151 female) completed self-report composite assessments of subjective well-being (SWB) and perceived inequality, and also measures of self-actualizing tendencies, and political orientation. Overall, participants who perceived higher levels of inequality had lower SWB, lower incomes, and were more politically liberal than their peers. Liberal participants also had lower incomes and lower SWB than their peers. Regression analyses revealed that higher incomes, perceiving lower inequality, and higher self-actualizing tendencies were all unique predictors of SWB, and that neither income nor political orientation moderated these findings. Finally, self-actualizing tendencies, unlike SWB, were not related to either participants’ political orientation or to their perceptions of inequality. Discussion addresses differences in the correlates of SWB and self-actualizing tendencies, and the importance of individuals’ subjective perceptions of inequality.<p></p>

Perceptions of Inequality and Subjective Well-Being: Connections with Political Orientation and Self-Actualization

This study was conducted via the MTurk (online) platform. A total of 301 participants (72.4% between 18 and 40 years old, 151 female) completed self-report composite assessments of subjective well-being (SWB) and perceived inequality, and also measures of self-actualizing tendencies, and political orientation. Overall, participants who perceived higher levels of inequality had lower SWB, lower incomes, and were more politically liberal than their peers. Liberal participants also had lower incomes and lower SWB than their peers. Regression analyses revealed that higher incomes, perceiving lower inequality, and higher self-actualizing tendencies were all unique predictors of SWB, and that neither income nor political orientation moderated these findings. Finally, self-actualizing tendencies, unlike SWB, were not related to either participants’ political orientation or to their perceptions of inequality. Discussion addresses differences in the correlates of SWB and self-actualizing tendencies, and the importance of individuals’ subjective perceptions of inequality.<p></p>