Elgar Handbooks on Inequality – serie

In this comprehensive Handbook, Kenneth Couch brings together expert contributors to provide insights into the impact of COVID-19 on new and pre-existing inequalities in health, work, and education. While sharper impacts on pre-existing cross-group disparities were often resolved by vaccinations and the lifting of restrictions, this important work indicates that in many respects disadvantaged groups will endure lasting negative effects from the pandemic.An interdisciplinary and international range of authors investigate disparities in mortality, healthcare spending, domestic violence, and mental health for people of different genders, ethnicities, immigration statuses, and age, providing novel contributions to post-pandemic scholarship and introducing innovative empirical research. They emphasize the effect of the pandemic on the labor market, including the ramifications on minority and migrant employment and the gender-specific outcomes of working from home. The Handbook also underscores the negative and heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on school enrollment, student well-being, and academic performance across all school ages. Ultimately, this Handbook provides a detailed overview of contemporary post-pandemic research into inequality.The Handbook on Inequality and COVID-19 is an essential read for academics, scholars, and researchers of public and social policy, particularly those focusing on health policy, economics, education, and inequality.

This cutting-edge Handbook offers fresh perspectives on the key topics related to the unequal use of digital technologies. Considering the ways in which technologies are employed, variations in conditions under which people use digital media and differences in their digital skills, it unpacks the implications of digital inequality on life outcomes.International contributors assess a variety of key contexts that impact access to digital technologies, including contextual variations related to geography and infrastructure, as well as individual differences related to age, income, health and disability status. Chapters explore how variations emerge across the life course, illustrating the effects of digital disparities on personal wellbeing. Intervening in critical debates relating to the digital divide, this Handbook offers key insights into privacy and trust issues that affect technological usage.Employing both quantitative and qualitative investigations into the relationship between social inequality and the Internet, this Handbook is crucial reading for scholars and researchers in both communication and sociology, particularly those focusing on digital inequalities and human-computer interaction. It will also benefit policymakers in need of innovative approaches to understanding, challenging and addressing the digital divide.

This comprehensive Handbook addresses a wide range of issues concerning inequality in contemporary China and its recent past. It covers diverse forms of inequality faced by Chinese citizens, from wage and income disparities to employment, education, the role of social insurance and public revenues.Björn Gustafsson and Xiuna Yang bring together a range of leading specialists from China and the wider global community to discuss the country’s profound transformation since the late 1980s. They outline how China has transitioned from a low-income country to an upper middle-income country, illustrating its shift from a planned economy to one in which the state plays a considerably smaller role. Contributing authors explore China’s rapid urbanization and the impact of this on living standards and the wellbeing of citizens. The Handbook also examines educational access and child inequality, delving into recent policies on housing as well as trends in household wealth, health and happiness.The Handbook on Inequality in China is a vital resource for students and academics in Chinese studies, economics, social policy and sociology. Policymakers will greatly benefit from its breadth of research into the economic complexities of life in contemporary China.

This unique Handbook charts shifts in the relationship between risks and inequalities over the last few decades, analysing how inequalities shape risk and how risks condition and intensify inequalities. Expert contributors examine the impacts of environmental, financial, social, urban, economic, and digital risks on inequalities, at both national and global levels.Identifying how the rise of novel risk formations is associated with changes in contemporary political economies, chapters explore new areas of research including the new urban crisis, the gendered impacts of precarious labour and social inequality in relation to agro-biotechnology. Contributing to an underdeveloped area of research, the Handbook breaks new ground to explore how tackling important issues via the prism of risk and inequality can provide novel insights, that solely focusing on only one or the other of these issues cannot.This Handbook will be critical reading for scholars and students of sociology, sociological theory, geography and political science. Its exploration of shifts in contemporary socially produced risks will also be beneficial for practitioners, economists and policy makers in these areas.

This cutting-edge Handbook offers fresh perspectives on the key topics related to the unequal use of digital technologies. Considering the ways in which technologies are employed, variations in conditions under which people use digital media and differences in their digital skills, it unpacks the implications of digital inequality on life outcomes.International contributors assess a variety of key contexts that impact access to digital technologies, including contextual variations related to geography and infrastructure, as well as individual differences related to age, income, health and disability status. Chapters explore how variations emerge across the life course, illustrating the effects of digital disparities on personal wellbeing. Intervening in critical debates relating to the digital divide, this Handbook offers key insights into privacy and trust issues that affect technological usage.Employing both quantitative and qualitative investigations into the relationship between social inequality and the Internet, this Handbook is crucial reading for scholars and researchers in both communication and sociology, particularly those focusing on digital inequalities and human-computer interaction. It will also benefit policymakers in need of innovative approaches to understanding, challenging and addressing the digital divide.

This unique Handbook charts shifts in the relationship between risks and inequalities over the last few decades, analysing how inequalities shape risk and how risks condition and intensify inequalities. Expert contributors examine the impacts of environmental, financial, social, urban, economic, and digital risks on inequalities, at both national and global levels.Identifying how the rise of novel risk formations is associated with changes in contemporary political economies, chapters explore new areas of research including the new urban crisis, the gendered impacts of precarious labour and social inequality in relation to agro-biotechnology. Contributing to an underdeveloped area of research, the Handbook breaks new ground to explore how tackling important issues via the prism of risk and inequality can provide novel insights, that solely focusing on only one or the other of these issues cannot.This Handbook will be critical reading for scholars and students of sociology, sociological theory, geography and political science. Its exploration of shifts in contemporary socially produced risks will also be beneficial for practitioners, economists and policy makers in these areas.

This innovative Handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of the complex relationship between inequality and the environment and illustrates the myriad ways in which they intersect.Featuring over 30 contributions from leading experts in the field, it explores the ways in which inequality impacts three of the most pressing contemporary environmental issues: climate change, natural resource extraction, and food insecurity. Laying the conceptual foundations for its analysis of key inequality–environment intersections, the Handbook covers theoretical traditions employed in the environmental inequality literature and examines different approaches to the concept of rights and how these influence scholarship on environmental justice. Chapters further investigate the multifaceted relationships between the natural environment and common forms of social inequalities, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class, the economy, and the state.Bringing together cutting-edge research on diverse inequality–environment intersections, this comprehensive Handbook will be relevant to both students and researchers in the social sciences and environmental sociology, politics, and geography. Its empirical insights will also prove valuable to public and social policymakers with access to mechanisms that can shape environmental protection policies.

Covering global, comparative, and single-country contexts, this Research Handbook presents wide-ranging, cutting-edge research on poverty and inequality. It maps out international trends in poverty and inequality and explores the key conceptual and operational frameworks, practical analyses, and policy applications and outcomes.Udaya R. Wagle brings together 27 substantive chapters with research and analyses from a diverse body of established authorities and researchers to create a forum and examine the complex and often under-explored issues related to poverty and inequality. Using empirical data and insights from the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, the individual chapters examine and explain how economic and social policies and programs have affected poverty and inequality. While unprecedented economic progress in the past few decades has improved standards of living across the globe, the Handbook concludes that creating a just and fair society requires policies that go beyond expanding economic opportunities.Providing a comprehensive coverage of the research and analysis into poverty and inequality, this incisive Handbook will be an invaluable reference text for students and scholars of economics, sociology, social policy, and comparative and development studies. The practical insights into policies and programs covered here will also benefit policymakers and practitioners interested in reducing poverty and inequality globally.

In this Handbook, Stephen Farrall and Susan McVie bring together a diverse array of leading experts to examine the relationship between different aspects of crime and inequality. They employ a variety of geographical and individual lenses and use case studies from the Global North and South.Expanding upon current knowledge and introducing new research, the chapters provide dynamic and multidimensional perspectives. They focus on a range of criminological topics, including victimization, offending, attitudes towards punishment, policing processes and the fear of crime. They also interrogate various competing and overlapping measures of inequality. Contributing authors illustrate the conceptual, theoretical and methodological challenges of studying crime and inequality, and underscore the need for engagement by criminologists in this under-researched field.The Handbook on Crime and Inequality is a vital resource for students and scholars of criminology, inequalities, welfare states, urban sociology and social policy. Policymakers and legal practitioners will also find its insights beneficial for understanding communities and informing governance.

This multidisciplinary international Research Handbook on Inequalities and Work, examining disparities within contemporary working life, comes at a critical juncture of global socio-historical change. As the world reels from the impact of economic insecurity, migration, wars, the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, the trans liberation fight, the climate crisis and the rise of Artificial Intelligence, systemic inequalities and their impacts have been thrust into the limelight, alongside the ceaseless struggle for social justice.This Research Handbook sees an impressive array of experts from the Global North and South explore inequality at work from many differing conceptual and methodological perspectives and in multiple national contexts. The chapters showcase cutting-edge research on a highly diverse range of global working environments. The authors consider the interrelated and intersectional influences of identity, social class, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, disability and belief in relation to cultures, organisations, occupations, resistance and regulation and provide unique insights into the complex nature of inequalities in workplaces, informed by contexts and power relations.This Research Handbook will be essential reading for students, academics and researchers interested in organizational behaviour, employment relations, labour policy, human resource management, public policy and sociology. Far-reaching in its scope, it will also prove invaluable for professionals and policymakers looking to improve working conditions across a range of critical areas.

The Research Handbook on Intergenerational Inequality is motivated by a core question in social science: to what extent does one’s family background and childhood experience predict success in life? This innovative Research Handbook provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary account of research on intergenerational inequality, focusing on its origins in sociology and economics.Expert contributors explore patterns of intergenerational persistence, how mobility varies for different groups, and the processes through which intergenerational inequality is produced. Chapters cover a range of novel topics including the intergenerational reproduction of elites, parental joblessness and its intergenerational impact, and the role of migration for intergenerational mobility. Bringing together experts from across the globe and from a variety of social science disciplines, the Research Handbook campaigns for greater cross-fertilisation between disciplinary boundaries and encourages future researchers to develop a deeper understanding of current mobility in order to better inform and improve social policy.This incisive Research Handbook will serve as a crucial reference point for researchers, scholars and students of social sciences, sociology, social policy, and economics. Its practical applications will also be highly beneficial for policymakers and practitioners working in social affairs.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the conceptualisation and the latest developments in research about child poverty and inequality. Adopting a child rights framework, it demonstrates the importance of a multi-dimensional understanding of poverty specific to children for both research and policy-making.Expert authors analyse inequalities, inequities, and poverty experienced by children. They cover key topics including the voices of children living in poverty, the use of machine learning and big data in research, and the emotional, physical and social dimensions of poverty experienced by children. Recognising the extensive links between child poverty and inequality in practice, the Handbook identifies how to overcome the current disconnect between research on the two topics. Drawing on empirical evidence, it explores how to create and enhance national and international policies to address, reduce, and ultimately eliminate child poverty and inequalities.The Handbook on Child Poverty and Inequality is an essential resource for students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including of development studies, the sociology of youth and childhood, and social policy in emerging countries. It is also a valuable read for policy-makers seeking to uphold and expand the rights of children.

Building upon the extensive and expansive tradition of research on social capital and inequality, this Handbook summarizes current social capital research and showcases cutting-edge applications.With a global range of diverse expert contributors, this Handbook explores quantitative and qualitative approaches to a broad array of substantive topics, including health, social media, disasters, crime, and employment. Chapters highlight the major theoretical and methodological advancements in the field, examining applications to affective and community-based outcomes and applications to instrumental and career-based outcomes. Ultimately, the Handbook provides a comprehensive review of the diversity of research on the resource of social capital and its relationship with the creation and maintenance of different forms of inequality.Interdisciplinary in scope, this Handbook is a vital resource for students and scholars of sociology and social policy, economics, education, communications, management, demography, social networks, and public administration. Its innovative theorizing and novel empirical contributions will also be of use to policymakers working to reduce inequality across communities.