Can the implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy goals be efficient? The challenge for achieving social equality in the European Union

The possible consequences of the Corona crisis for social inequalities have received a lot of attention in public as well as scientific debates. On the one hand, concerns have been raised that the pandemic intensified pre-existing patterns of social inequality. On the other hand, the crisis has also been seen as an opportunity for social change and a renegotiation of social relationships. Complementing previous research that focused on the immediate consequences of the pandemic, this Special Issue is devoted to its longer-term effects. It unites six theory-guided empirical studies that use qualitative and quantitative longitudinal data to study changes in social inequality in the course of the pandemic in different life domains. Overall, the results do not show a universal trend of increased inequalities. While changes in different life domains occurred, such as better grading for students, intensified strong ties in families or increased social trust, there is only limited evidence of changes in social inequalities. In general, a complex picture of effects, consequences and concomitants of the pandemic appears.

Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations: VIII. Distribution of Income by Size

What Is Social Inequality and Why Does it Matter? Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Background: Past studies have assessed trends in smoking prevalence among different social strata in developed countries. However, we know of no study that quantifies changes in social inequalities in smoking-attributable mortality rates over time. The aim of this study was to assess changes in social inequalities for smoking-attributable male mortality rates by educational level between two time periods in France and Poland. Methods: The contribution of smoking to adult male mortality in each population was estimated indirectly from disease-specific death rates in that population (using absolute lung cancer rates to indicate proportions due to smoking of mortality from certain other diseases). We applied these methods to male death rates at ages 35-69 years from three different social strata in France and Poland, based on a total of 202,779 deaths. The social strata were low, middle, and high based on completed years of education (less than 12 years, 12 years, and more than 12 years, respectively). For France, the comparison periods were 1990-94 and 1995-99; for Poland, 1995 was compared to 2002. Results: Smoking-attributable mortality rates were 3 to 6 times higher in the lowest education group as compared to the highest education group in both countries. In France, smoking-attributable mortality rates within each education group remained similar between 1990-94 and 1995-99. Between 1995 and 2002, Poland showed a reduction in smoking-attributable mortality rates by 15%, 4%, and 52% in the low, middle, and high education group, respectively. Conclusion: Although men in the lowest education group in France were around four times more likely to die from smoking as compared to those in the highest education group, there was little change between the periods studied for this country. While smoking-attributable mortality rates in the highest education group of Polish males decreased much more compared to the lower education groups; declines were seen in all education groups. Mortality rates from more recent years, when tobacco control efforts have accelerated in both countries, will be of interest to confirm these trends. Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2010;3(12 Suppl):B86.

Editor—In their editorial Davey Smith et al welcome the report of the independent inquiry into inequalities in health but criticise it for not sufficiently tackling the underlying causes of health...

Aims: To examine social inequality in exposure to bullying at school among adolescents and changes in social inequality over time. We applied data from seven nationally representative school surveys in 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 in Denmark, the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. Methodology: The study population was 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds, response rate 87.9%, N=33,460 with comparable data about exposure to bullying and socioeconomic status. The analyses included 1) absolute social inequality, i.e. percent difference in exposure to bullying between low and high socioeconomic groups and 2) relative social inequality based on logistic regression analyses with odds ratios for exposure to bullying by socioeconomic background. Results: The prevalence of exposure to bullying decreased from 24.4% in 1994 to 4.9% in 2018. Bullying was significantly most prevalent among schoolchildren from lower socioeconomic groups. The absolute social inequality decreased from 10.7% in 1994 to 3.9% in 2018. The relative social inequality was 1.30 (1.19-1.43) in middle and 1.77 (1.59-1.96) in low socioeconomic group, compared to high. There was no significant change in relative social inequality from 1994 to 2018. Conclusion: In the period 1994 to 2018 with substantial reduction in exposure to bullying at school there was a decrease in the absolute social inequality and an unchanged relative social inequality in exposure to bullying.

This paper seeks to examine changes in health inequalities in Finland from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. To improve our understanding of the contribution of employment status changes to class and educational differences in health within the context of changing labour market conditions, we examined the differences in ill health among social classes, educational groups, and employment status groups. The data was derived from nation-wide Finnish Surveys on Living Conditions from 1986 and 1994. Analyses included the age range 25-64 years. Health was measured using limiting long-standing illness and perceived health as below good. Results are presented as age-standardized prevalence percentages and odds ratios from logistic regression analyses. The pattern and size of relative social inequalities in ill health have remained generally stable during the eight-year study period in Finland. Differences between social classes have changed only slightly. Differences between educational groups have declined somewhat among men, but have remained stable among women. Compared with the employed, health among the unemployed, housewives, and pensioners has improved for both men and women. Analysing social class differences within both the employed and the non-employed showed only negligible changes. Changes in social inequalities in health as indicated by class and educational differentials among Finnish men and women have mostly been negligible. The observed changes are likely to have been affected by the 1990s' labour market crisis in Finland. The rapidly increasing mass unemployment is unlikely to have been very individually selective in the short run. However, in the longer run, to the extent that unemployment remains high, this trend can be expected to change as re-entry to paid employment is likely to be more individually selective.

Previous studies have confirmed the position that higher education is a sine-qua-non for human capital development and economic growth. The 2014 rebasing of Gross Domestic Product made Nigeria the 26 th largest economy in the world and the biggest in Africa. Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pronounced Nigeria again as having the largest economy in Africa. Yet Africa’s largest economy faces a myriad of challenges, such as high prevalence of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, youth unemployment, huge infrastructure deficits, income and social inequalities. However, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has its goal 8 as “promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all” by 2030. Based on this background, this paper proceeds to examine how human development can translate to inclusive economic growth. It focuses mainly on enhancement of human capabilities which is one of the key drivers of inclusive growth. It assesses the status and performance of the indicators of human development in Nigeria and compares the outcomes with that of the emerging and developed nations. Utilizing secondary data and descriptive statistical analytical tools, the paper finds out that the indices of human development and the knowledge economy recorded higher values in the emerging and developed countries than what exists in the developing countries. The paper therefore recommends the urgent need for policy makers to formulate appropriate policy mix that will ensure increase in investment in human capital and all indices of human development and knowledge economy. This is expected to be via improvement in quantity and quality of education in general and higher education in particular for individuals to contribute to and benefit from economic growth. Key Words: Human Development, Human Development Indices, Inclusive Growth and Knowledge Economy Indices.

A coup d’état is an all-around consequential event, and coups remain frequent in sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, ethnic inequality—the measure of income disparities at the level of ethnic groups—has been paid little attention as a potential cause of coups and other types of regime breakdown. More work exists on the relationship between ethnicity broadly construed and coup d’état, and in particular the role of unequal access to the military for different ethnic groups and the role of ethnic exclusion from political power. Our own work presents a theory that links “between” and “within” ethnic group income inequality to coup d’état initiated by ethnic groups. The argument is that high income and wealth inequality between ethnic groups, coupled with within-group homogeneity, increases the salience of ethnicity and solidifies within-group preferences vis-à-vis the preferences of other ethnic groups, increasing the appeal and feasibility of a coup. Empirical findings from sub-Saharan Africa support the main theoretical claim linking ethnic inequality to coup d’état. Additional evidence from sub-Saharan Africa and a larger global sample are consistent with the causal mechanisms. More remains to be researched in this area, however. Directions for future research include looking at the access of ethnic groups to the military, the intervening role of natural resources in the calculus of ethnic groups, and the role of ethnic inequality in incumbent takeovers.

Social inequality means the existence of social status groups and, therefore, a normatively embedded structure of social stratification. This chapter deals with social inequalities and their dynamics as conditional and causal factors and as results of processes of radical change. Concerning the first aspect, the chapter discusses social class inequalities and dynamics of (absolute) impoverishment, relative deprivation, and rising expectations among certain social groups that may determine ‘transformative’ pressure or even revolutionary situations. Regarding the impact of social transformations on social inequalities, the chapter suggests that the more radical and complex the social transformations, the greater are their effects on social structures and regimes of social inequality. This thesis is underpinned by providing empirical findings on social mobility and income inequality in different historical waves and (sub-)types of transformation. Finally, the chapter identifies seven crucial bundles of factors determining the extent of income inequality as an outcome of current societal transformations and their characteristics.

In this review, we draw attention to the potential for social and systemic changes associated with attempts to contain the spread of COVID-19 to precipitate, maintain and exacerbate pain by increasing the social threats faced by individuals with chronic pain. We also suggest strategies for mitigating the social impact of COVID-19 on those living with chronic pain, for instance by learning from the resilience demonstrated by people in pain who have found ways to deal with social threat. Lastly, we suggest several time-critical, high-impact research questions for further investigation.

BackgroundHealth expectancy is a useful tool to monitor health inequalities. The evidence about the recent changes in social inequalities in healthy expectancy is relatively scarce and inconclusive, and most studies have focused on Anglo-Saxon and central or northern European countries. The objective of this study was to analyse the changes in socioeconomic inequalities in disability-free life expectancy in a Southern European population, the Basque Country, during the first decade of the 21st century.MethodsThis was an ecological cross-sectional study of temporal trends on the Basque population in 1999–2003 and 2004–2008. All-cause mortality rate, life expectancy, prevalence of disability and disability free-life expectancy were calculated for each period according to the deprivation level of the area of residence. The slope index of inequality and the relative index of inequality were calculated to summarize and compare the inequalities in the two periods.ResultsDisability free-life expectancy decreased as area deprivation increased both in men and in women. The difference between the most extreme groups in 2004–2008 was 6.7 years in men and 3.7 in women. Between 1999–2003 and 2004–2008, socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy decreased, and inequalities in disability-free expectancy increased in men and decreased in women.ConclusionsThis study found important socioeconomic inequalities in health expectancy in the Basque Country. These inequalities increased in men and decreased in women in the first decade of the 21st century, during which the Basque Country saw considerable economic growth.

The literature of social class and inequality is not only diverse and rich in sight, but also complex and fragmented in structure. This article seeks to map the topic landscape of the field and identify salient development trajectories over time. We apply the Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling technique to extract 25 distinct topics from 14,038 SSCI articles published between 1956 to 2017. We classified three topics as “hot”, eight as “stable” and 14 as “cold”, based on each topic’s idiosyncratic temporal trajectory. We also listed the three most cited references and the three most popular journal outlets per topic. Our research suggests that future effort may be devoted to Topics “urban inequalities, corporate social responsibility and public policy in connected capitalism”, “education and social inequality”, “community health intervention and social inequality in multicultural contexts” and “income inequality, labor market reform and industrial relations”.

<h3>Background</h3> Japan is considered to be an archetype of social equality, but social and income inequalities expanded recently. Adverse social and economic changes and liberalisation of labour market regulations took...

BackgroundJapan is considered to be an archetype of social equality, but social and income inequalities expanded recently. Adverse social and economic changes and liberalisation of labour market regulations took place...