Course: Topics in Inequality

Professor: Conchita D’Ambrosio

ECTS: 2

Aims & Objectives:

The course will focus on the measurement and interpretation of inequality, its effects on individual well-being, behaviour and socio-economic outcomes. In the lectures I will give, the students will be trained with the basic knowledge necessary to the analysis of inequality and related concepts. We will focus on the distribution of income, and study phenomena such as poverty, inequality, and polarization. We will tackle multidimensionality in welfare, and consider issues such as multidimensional inequality, poverty, and social exclusion. The main questions we will answer are the following: What does it mean to be well-off (or deprived), how can societies make judgements and decisions about welfare, how can we compare well-being across people, and across time, what is meant by poverty, inequality, polarization, and income mobility, why poverty and inequality matter, and what is social exclusion and deprivation? This course will tackle both the theoretical as well as the empirical issues surrounding these concepts.