Projects
Concerned about inequality? The political salience of economic inequality among voters and political parties KU Leuven
Economic inequality is rising in most democracies: the gap between the incomes of the wealthiest part of the population and the rest is widening. Despite high and rising inequality, and its pressure on redistributive welfare states, there is no systematic evidence that inequality leads to redistributive policies or public demands for such policies. We are confronted with a paradox: Most citizens and politicians realise that inequality exists ...
Inequality, consumption, and climate change policy: the demand side matters Ghent University
This research project studies the influence of inequality on an economy’s environmental impact and the implications of this influence for climate change mitigation policy. A key observation underlying this research project is that inequality influences a society's environmental impact through the effects of inequality on consumption: (1) inequality might induce increased positional consumption, and (2) low-income households tend to have ...
How is social inequality reproduced by grade retention? Examining implicit bias among teachers with regard to the decision whether to retain a student or not. Ghent University
Grade retention has been criticized because it reproduces existing social inequalities. Students with an ethnic minority status and/or an underprivileged socioeconomic background have a higher chance of being retained in comparison to their counterparts with similar school achievements. Grade retention can be problematic for the future academic career, as retainees have three to seven times less chance to obtain a degree in secondary ...
Gender inequality in the labor market: The role of flexible jobs KU Leuven
When analysing household behaviour, economists have traditionally relied on the ‘unitary’ model, where the household is assumed to maximize a unique utility function. However, it is by now well understood that, when applied to couples, the unitary approach fails when brought to the data. This has led to the development of what is now known as the ‘collective’ model. The collective model acknowledges that the household is a collective of ...
How inequality kills. Two centuries of social and spatial disparities in all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Belgium (1800-2025) Ghent University
INEQKILL focuses on a crucial dimension of inequality in society, the disparity in death, coined ‘ultimate inequality’. The COVID-19 pandemic has incited renewed interest into infectious diseases as potential drivers of social and spatial mortality inequalities, alongside life-style disease (cardiovascular diseases and cancer)and external causes of death. The project aims at generating new knowledge and insights into the origin and ...
How inequality kills. Two centuries of social and spatial disparities in all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Belgium (1800-2025) Vrije Universiteit Brussel
inequality’. The COVID-19 pandemic has incited renewed interest into infectious diseases as potential drivers
of social and spatial mortality inequalities, alongside life-style disease (cardiovascular diseases and cancer)
and external causes of death. The project aims at generating new knowledge and insights into the ...
The value of job amenities and its impact on inequality and returns to education KU Leuven
The overarching goal of this project is to identify how workers value jobs, which is essential to evaluate the current state of the labour market in terms of efficiency, inequality and returns to education. We start by evaluating the accuracy-cost tradeoff of three existing methods eliciting the willingness to pay for job characteristics in general and for job security in particular. Then we use the most cost-effective approach to determine ...
Sabbatical Karen Phalet: Making and unmaking boundaries: Diversity and inequality in European migration contexts.(BOUNDARIES) KU Leuven
During my sabbatical I want to develop interdisciplinary research on cultural border dynamics against the background of new forms of migration-related diversity and inequality in Europe. Building on cross-national and longitudinal data and studies with minorities and migrants in recent years, I want to put together empirical puzzle pieces in an integrative approach to border dynamics at the micro level (in ethnically diverse social ...