What is ‘social inequality’?

1. What is Social Inequality in Central and Eastern Europe?Stephen Whitefieldstephen.whitefield@politics.ox.ac.ukand Matthew Lovelessmatthew.loveless@politics.ox.ac.ukEUREQUAL: http://eurequal.politics.ox.ac.uk/ Paper presented at CEELBAS Conference Session, ‘Emerging dimensions of social inequality in Russia and Eastern Europe’, St Antony’s College, Oxford, December 13, 2008 Work in Progress – Please DO NOT CITE

2. What is ‘social inequality’? • A vague concept compared with work on … • Income inequality (Milanovic, 1998; Atkinson, 1999) • Inequality of wealth (Cagetti and De Nardi, 2008) • Labour market segmentation, e.g. by gender, ethnicity (Schrover et al, 2007) • Welfare status (Layte and Whelan, 2003) • Skills and training (Brown et al, 2008) • Health inequality (Marmot and Wilkinson, 1999) • Housing inequality (Morris and Winn, 1990) • Social inequality as a package of inequalities

3. The ‘CEELBAS’ working definition • “Social inequality refers to the ways in which socially-defined categories of persons (according to characteristics such as gender, age, ‘class’ and ethnicity) are differentially positioned with regard to access to a variety of social ‘goods’, such as the labour market and other sources of income, the education and healthcare systems, and forms of political representation and participation. These and other forms of social inequality are shaped by a range of structural factors, such as geographical location or citizenship status, and are often underpinned by cultural discourses and identities defining, for example, whether the poor are ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’.” http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/socialinequality

4. A Eurequal working definition of social inequality… • … the structure of advantage and disadvantage in the life chances and life outcomes of individuals and families (health, happiness, income, wealth, social and cultural opportunities, etc) that are significantly shaped by citizens’ social and economic locations and identities (labour market situation, social class, education, gender, ethnicity, age, citizenship, etc), by other important distributional mechanisms (social networks -corruption, blat’; government institutions and policies), and by national characteristics (economic and political development).

5. The problem of packages in Central and Eastern Europe • Some research points to the fragmenting impact of Communist power and command economies on the packaging of advantages and disadvantages • Housing (Szelenyi, 1987) • Class fragmentation (Kende and Strmiska, 1987) • Communist-era political economy (Bunce, 1985; Sabel and Stark, 1982) • The transitional character of markets and democracy may also limit the emergence of ‘packages’ that one might expect in established market democracies (Kitschelt, 1992) • The differential character of market and democratic development in the region might lead us to expect differences in the form and extent of packaging

6. Issues arising • Is there a social inequality package? How do packages vary across countries? • Does our measure of social inequality packages correlate in appropriate ways with some other predicted outcomes of social advantage and disadvantage? • What kinds of people do well or badly in terms of the package of social inequality? How do the determinants of social advantage vary across countries? • What kinds of countries are more or less socially advantaged? • How unequal are countries in terms of the distribution of advantages and disadvantages? And what kinds of countries are more unequal than others?

7. The Eurequal surveys • Conducted in 13 countries in Spring, 2007 • Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine • National probability samples of between 1000 and 2000 respondents

8. The packaging of social advantage and disadvantage • To what extent do the following ‘arenas’ in which goods may be differentially distributed correlate with one another? As one package, none, or many? • Income • Possessions • Savings • Employment benefits • Housing situation • Health • Health access • Educational access • Cultural access

10. Figure 1. Percentage contribution of each factor loading to factor as a whole (pooled and by country)

11. What does the package of advantage and disadvantage predict in terms of other aspects household economic circumstances? • External validation exercise for our factor • If our factor picks up differences in the distribution of advantage and disadvantages, then it should clearly be associated with a range of other important household economic circumstances • Material deprivation • Perceptions of changes in living standards • Ability to buy medicine or pay utility bills

12. Table 2. Regression of assessments of social inequality factor on to aspects of household economic circumstances * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

13. What kinds of countries are advantaged or disadvantages? • Differences across the region • Russia and Ukraine are most disadvantaged on average, while Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Slovakia are most advantaged • Differences in economic and political development • Growing countries have on average more advantages • Politically freer countries are also more advantaged • Differences by levels of inequality • More unequal countries (by comparison of gini’s) are also disadvantaged

14. Conclusions • There is a package – one package of social advantage and disadvantage • The package is strongly predictive of important household economic outcomes and perceptions • The ‘usual suspects’ do well and badly and differences across countries appear relatively weak in terms of the social determinants of advantage and disadvantage • Countries that are more democratic, grow economically and are more egalitarian have populations that are on average more advantaged than countries that are not • In other words … Central and Eastern Europe does not appear to present differently than states elsewhere … • … although until we can do the same analysis elsewhere we can’t be sure. • Still, the analysis of social inequality has a promising future.