Vida Maralani began her work of learning that education is the key to social and economic development and reducing inequality, as she had been taught. “I have reviewed some of the most expensive social policies our government has ever funded to prevent school dropouts,” said Maralani, interim director of the Center for the Study of Inequality at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. However you have found that policies aimed at children in low-income families who are at risk of dropping out of school can do a lot. “These children did not go to their places of residence, and their mothers did not have enough resources than before,” he said. “The issues surrounding their community have not changed.”
Often, the unequal or unfair distribution of resources and opportunities in society is studied in one place, such as income or education, Maralani said. Yet inequalities in income, wealth, education, health and access to technology are related and vary in gender, race, nationality and location in important ways. The main causes are multidimensional and powerful. Some of the most influential activities in the last decade – most notably the French economist Thomas Piketty’s 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century – have shown how persistent inequality has even raised international concerns.
COVID-19 has raised the bar for inclusive research, because scientists are now unable to assess the impact of the epidemic on such inequalities. Loss of income as a result of the epidemic is estimated to be high among low-income people – plunging many into poverty and jeopardizing future generations, according to the World Bank. No wonder the field grows. “The concern that growing inequalities will last for a long time is one of the main reasons why those in the field are constantly expanding their research through the challenges of different sectors – and increasingly through the lens of justice,” Maralani said.
As researchers try to differentiate complex drivers of extreme inequality, expanding the category of experts and organizations examining inequality is a “silver line”, Maralani said. We need more people with the right skills to work together in different fields such as social welfare, health and climate change. The challenge, he says, is to go beyond the well-thought-out ways of thinking in terms of inequality and full thinking.Take the migration of people. Sociologists have long studied demographics, but human migration is now largely influenced by natural resources and climate change. “As we get more data, our ability to learn things really grows,” says Maralani. “And as we become better able to share and visualize and interpret our data, our interactions with the community are growing.”
Changes in technology, declining trade unions, lower wages and an increase in no-contract gig jobs have all contributed to the growing inequality in the United States since 1980, raising concerns among researchers, policymakers, and politicians. One of the UN goals of the Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce inequality within and between countries. And many donors – including the Ford Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation, all in New York City, and the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, Illinois – have launched “evidence reduction” programs, and are asking researchers to develop evidence-based strategies to help meet purpose.
Bringing the community to research
One goal of inequality research is to make scientific production itself more equitable. As multidisciplinary approaches grow to meet the growing demand from funding agencies and journals, scientists are busy figuring out how to engage members of the public in a meaningful way.
During the ten years Sasha Henriques was a genetic counselor in the United Kingdom and South Africa, he had constant worries about his career. He wondered if the information used to counsel patients with genetic predisposition was sufficient. And the lack of diversity of counselors bothered him. To explore the connection between race, ethnicity, ancestry and genomics, Henriques began his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK. “Everything is so different,” she says, “that no one else belongs to the same group.”An important strategy is to ensure that oppressed communities are directly involved in the development of context-based research. For example, some health equity researchers warn that publishing work in groups that were not historically excluded from the process may lead to prudent conclusions that further bias1.
If the goal is to find real solutions to inequality, Henriques notes, it is important to bring society into the scientific process. “It can be deliberately embedded within research and research design,” he adds. As Henriques explores how he can do just that in his research, he has created a website to start conversations with community members. Bringing people into research prevents the production of science from becoming yet another site of inequality. It also helps to unearth researchers’ hidden biases and ensures greater confidence in the research outcomes. “It matters who produces the knowledge,” says Susanne Koch, a sociologist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany who studies how inequalities shape forest and environmental research.
A trendy warning
Given the burgeoning interest in inequalities, seasoned researchers worry that newcomers, sometimes viewed as interlopers, will simply tack equity onto projects because it is trendy, and thus end up publishing sub-par analyses. Elle Lett, a social epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and her colleagues have referred to such researchers as “health equity tourists”, who are “at risk of polluting the health equity landscape and riddling the academic record with ineffectual, and potentially harmful studies that mischaracterize root causes of health inequities and obfuscate potential solutions”.
Steven Roberts, a racial-inequality researcher at Stanford University in California, says that adding an inequality dimension simply to be “trendy” can foster a careless, even reckless, approach that does not engage with issues as deeply and as meaningfully as it should. For example, he says, research focused on a white population might just state that future work will need to factor in diversity, yet offer little description of why that is necessary, what it would look like and why people of colour weren’t included in the first place.
Roberts is finishing a sabbatical year at the Russell Sage Foundation, where he is the only psychologist in a cohort of economists, sociologists, political scientists and population-studies researchers who are sharing insights on how their fields investigate inequality. Essentially, each person presents their project ranging from defining white privilege to identifying racial inequality in scientific publications and receives crowdsourced feedback across disciplines. “It’s been the best interdisciplinary experience of my life, and it’s been a rare thing,” he says. Still, he realizes it is difficult to maintain that level of cross-fertilization, especially as an early-career researcher.
Data and technology challenges
One of the biggest hurdles for researchers studying inequality in communities is a lack of data. Bonnielin Swenor, director of the Johns Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland, who is visually impaired, studies the discrimination and oppression that affects the disabled community — the biggest minority group in the United States, at 67 million adults. In July 2020, Swenor co-authored a plea in The Lancet Public Health to include disability information alongside age, race, ethnicity and gender identity when gathering data about COVID-19 — and to make collection of such data routine to create a more equitable societyIncomplete data, she argued, would result in unreliable disease risk estimates.With US$1.5 million in financial support from Johns Hopkins, Swenor started a research centre in 2019 to address such data oppression. The centre collects data on disability disparities in employment, education and even COVID-19 vaccine access, and aims to share those data to maximize health and equity for people with all types of disability. “Without the data, it’s as if inequities don’t exist,” she adds.
One advantage, however it is that improvements in computational power will allow researchers to comb through decades of qualitative data, such as ethnographies and case studies, to gain fresh insights. “We’ll be able to look across case studies and identify patterns which we weren’t able to see before,” she says. And that will be important globally, because inequality is not going to go away, she says, adding that climate change will rapidly accelerate it.Trying to understand the social determinants of inequality is really humbling, says Maralani. The factors underlying inequalities are dynamic and hard to measure, change over the life course and are passed down through generations. For Kalb, these challenges demand robust scholarship from both veteran and newcomer researchers alike. “We need to brainstorm together,” he says.
To be effective, inequalities researchers will need to move beyond data collection and analysis, says Swenor. They must “dismantle the root cause of the sources of inequities — the policies, the institutions and the systemic issues that create inequities for certain groups,” she says. “That is the future.”Bringing people to research prevents the production of science from being another area of inequality. It also helps to uncover the subtle bias of researchers and ensures greater confidence in research results. “It is important who is the source of the information,” said Susanne Koch, a sociologist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany who examines how inequalities affect forestry and environmental research.
Given the growing interest in inequality, senior researchers worry that newcomers, sometimes considered interviewees, will simply take up equity in projects because it is fashionable, and thus end up publishing less analysis. Elle Lett, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, and colleagues have called such researchers “health-conscious visitors”, who are at risk of tarnishing the balance of health and destroying an academic record by failing, and potentially dangerous. risk studies that negatively address the causes of health inequalities and undermine potential solutions .
White-focused research may not only mean that future work
Steven Roberts, a researcher on racial inequality at Stanford University in California, says that increasing the level of inequality just to be “fashionable” can encourage a way of indifference, even negligence, that does not involve issues as deeply and effectively as appropriate. For example, he says, white-focused research may not only mean that future work will need to include diversity, but also provide a small explanation of why that is necessary, what it would look like and why people of color were not included in the first place.
Roberts ends a Sabbath year at the Russell Sage Foundation, where he is the only psychologist in a team of economists, sociologists, political scientists and sociologists who share details on how their fields investigate inequality. In fact, each person presents his or her own project – from the definition of white rights to the identification of racial inequality in science textbooks – and receives a multidisciplinary response across all fields. “It has been the best experience of my life, and it has been quite rare,” he said. However, he realizes that it is difficult to maintain that level of fertilization, especially as a new researcher.
Data and technology challenges
One of the biggest obstacles for researchers studying social inequality is the lack of data. Bonnielin Swenor, director of the Johns Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland, is visually impaired, studying discrimination and oppression affecting a disabled community – the largest group in the United States, out of 67 million adults. In July 2020, Swenor jointly wrote an application to Lancet Public Health to include information on disability and age, race, nationality and gender when collecting information on COVID-19 – and collect such data to create a more equitable society2. . He further added that incomplete data could lead to unreliable disease risk estimates. With US $ 1.5 million funding from Johns Hopkins, Swenor set up a research center in 2019 to address such data pressures. The Center collects data on disability disparities in work, education and even achieving the goal of COVID-19, and aims to share that data to increase health and equity for people with all forms of disability. “Without data, there seems to be no equality,” he adds.
Another advantage, however, is that the development of integration capabilities will allow researchers to compile decades of quality data, such as ethnographies and case studies, to gain new insights. “We will be able to look at all the subjects and identify patterns that we could not see before,” he said. And that will be important worldwide, because inequality will not end, he says, adding that climate change will accelerate faster. Trying to understand the social aspects of inequality is truly humbling, says Maralani. The causes of inequality are volatile and difficult to measure, change over the course of life and are passed down from generation to generation. For Kalb, these challenges require a strong scholarship for both experienced and newly engaged researchers. He says: “We need to consult together. To be successful, inequality researchers will need to go beyond data collection and analysis, Swenor said. They must “remove the root causes of inequality – policies, institutions and systematic issues that create inequality in certain groups,” he said. “That is tomorrow.”
Source Journal Reference: Virginia Gewin, The rise of inequality research: can spanning disciplines help tackle injustice?, Narute Career News 92022), https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01684-1
