Social inequality

Inequality is not difference. Saying that people are unequal is saying that some are disadvantaged relative to others; inequality is disadvantage in a social context. The main inequalities in society are class, gender, race and inequalities in income and wealth.

Inequalities are usually represented in one of three patterns:

• Hierarchical inequality. Inequalities stretch from the top to the bottom, with everyone ranked in a relative position. This is the main pattern of inequality in income and wealth.
• Stratification. People are ranked in groups, set at different levels. This model is mainly used in discussions of class and gender.
• Social division. Societies can be seen as almost divided between groups - 'black' and 'white', men and women, rich and poor. A society which was genuinely 'divided' would not be a society any more, but the image of division is a powerful one: the 19th century politician Benjamin Disraeli, for example, wrote of the rich and poor as 'two nations'.

These issues are discussed further in the page on "welfare and society".

Policies for equality

The inequalities which people are concerned with, Rae suggests, can concern

• individuals - the comparison is made, for example, between rich and poor people
• blocs in society - like women, racial minorities, old people or regions

• segments - for example, a distinction confined to children or to women.

A policy which corrects one inequality (e.g. between women and men) can aggravate another (e.g. between rich and poor, if the beneficiaries are richer women). For example, there is a current argument in India that attempts to avoid gender discrimination will discriminate between castes.

Policies for equality can aim at

• equality of treatment. This is treatment without bias, prejudice or special conditions applying to people. (It is not treating everyone the same - equality of treatment in health services does not mean that everyone gets a tracheotomy!)
• equal opportunity. This can be the opportunity to compete (in which case it is the same as equal treatment), or the chance to compete on the same footing as others (which may require some redress before the competition starts).

• equality of outcome. Policies which are concerned with inequalities of income or health status are generally concerned with removing disadvantage in outcome.

Redistribution

A measure is redistributive if the people who receive goods or services from a measure are not the same as the people who pay. All welfare provision is, by definition, redistributive in some way.

Redistribution does not have to be from rich to poor. Redistribution is conventionally classified as vertical or horizontal. Vertical redistribution may be progressive (from rich to poor) or regressive (from poor to rich). Horizontal redistribution goes from one kind of group to another - from men to women, households without children to families with children, tenants to owner-occupiers.

Egalitarian redistribution is progressive, but there are many ways to achieve equality, with different effects. Rae outlines four strategies:

• • maximin, or raising the minimum;
  • minimax, or levelling down the best off;
  • least difference, reducing the range of inequality at each end; and
  • ratio, compressing the range so that everyone is pushed nearer to others. [1]

The social division of welfare

Titmuss identified several different kinds of redistributive process, arguing that it was not possible to understand the redistributive impact of social policy without taking them fully into account. He referred to a 'social division of welfare', including three main types of welfare:

1. social welfare (the social services);
2. fiscal welfare (welfare distributed through the tax system); and
3. occupational welfare (welfare distributed by industry as part of employment). [2]

The classification is fairly crude. The category of fiscal welfare bundles together subsidies, incentives and transfer payments, including income maintenance. Occupational welfare includes perks, salary-related benefits, measures intended to improve the efficiency of the workforce and some philanthropic measures,. The classification excludes legal welfare (redistribution through the courts), the voluntary sector and the informal sector. The importance of the idea was, however,

• • to draw attention to different patterns of redistribution
  • to explain that different kinds of redistribution (for example by tax or by benefits) can have similar effects, and
  • to broaden the scope of social policy as a subject.

The 'strategy of equality'

Tawney argued that public spending is the most effective way of redistributing resources. The aim, he writes,

'is not the division of the nation's income into eleven million fragments, to be distributed, without further ado, like cake at a school treat, among its eleven million families. It is, on the contrary, the pooling of its surplus resources by means of taxation, and the use of the funds thus obtained to make accessible to all, irrespective of their income, occupation or social position, the conditions of civilisation which, in the absence of such measures, can only be enjoyed by the rich.' [3]

The provision of universal benefits helps to create equality in its widest sense - the reassurance provided by social protection.

Julian Legrand argues against this that the universal social services are not available equally to all. The universal National Health Service in the UK gives health care dispropotionately to middle class people. The state provision of education tends to be regressive, partly because people are poorest when the children are young, but mainly because it is the middle classes who gain most from education after the age of 16. Transport subsidies are worth most to people who travel the greatest distances, who tend to be middle class. And housing subsidies tend to favour home owners, who are more likely to be wealthy. In his view, the 'strategy of equality' proposed by Tawney has failed. [4]

References

1. D Rae, 1981, Equalities, Harvard University Press.
2. R Titmuss, 1955, The social division of welfare, in Essays on the Welfare State, Allen and Unwin 1963.
3. R H Tawney, 1931, Equality, Unwin Books.
4. J Le Grand, 1982, The strategy of equality, Allen and Unwin.

Further reading

P Spicker, 2006, Liberty, equality, fraternity, Policy Press.

http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/equality.htm