Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies

AMCIS

Summary

AMCIS studies inequalities in (post-) industrialized societies and particularly focuses on the impact of stratifying variables (social origin, education, gender and ethnicity) on three outcome pillars: socioeconomic attainment (concerning outcomes in the domains of education, work, and income), political behaviour and opinions, and living arrangements. The central focus is how institutions and structures mediate the impact of social origin, education, gender and ethnicity on outcomes in each of these three ‘pillars’. 

Organisational structure and collaborations

The AMCIS is founded in 2010 to develop the study of inequality in outcomes in the fields of social stratification, political behaviour and living arrangements as one of the research foci of the University of Amsterdam. AMCIS helps to bring together existing research groups strong on quantitative empirical-theoretical research on inequalities. Each group brings in its own primary expertise, which will lead to mutual benefits leading to an expansion of research activities, and greater coherence and visibility of the various groups working on similar domains. The AMCIS will put Amsterdam on the academic map as a place where Inequality is studied, in the same way as has been achieved in the United States at Stanford, Columbia, Yale and Cornell universities.

AMCIS, located at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Amsterdam, will collaborate with other UvA faculties and with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. AMCIS will form the home community of inequality researchers of these various institutes, with a PhD community, research seminars, and collaborative research projects. A first list of planned collaborative research themes is given below. The expertises of the different groups can be described as follows. Links between groups are displayed in the graph below. 

Amcis

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Background and substantive description of AMCIS

In the past decades the nature of inequalities has changed substantially. Income inequality has risen in a number of countries, at the level of both individuals and households. Poverty rates have gone up and later stabilized. Inequalities of educational opportunities by social class and ethnicity have decreased, but certainly not vanished. Many of these kinds of inequalities not only change across time, but also vary significantly across countries. AMCIS studies inequalities in (post-) industrialized societies and particularly focuses on the impact of stratifying variables (social origin, education, gender and ethnicity) on three outcome pillars: stratification (concerning outcomes in the domains of education, work, and income), political behaviour and opinions, and living arrangements. The central focus is on the impact of institutions and structures on such inequalities.

By examining the institutional impact on different types of inequality, we are able to see whether particular national institutional arrangements enhance equality in one domain, but enhance inequality in another domain. For instance, educational differentiation may increase inequality of educational opportunity by social class and ethnicity, but at the same time might improve the signalling function of education on the labour market. Or, as another example, family-friendly policies are known to increase equality in the household division of labour between partners, but at the same time lead to higher levels of gender segregation across sectors.

The present economic crisis may increase the political and social importance of social divisions by class, education, or ethnicity. If persistent social cleavages diminish social cohesion, for instance in terms of larger disparities in democratic participation, home ownership, demographic transitions, social trust, and educational and occupational attainment, unintended side-effects of economic growth have unjustifiably been neglected. We will precisely study these neglected side-effects in order to inform science, society and policy. 

Central outcomes: socioeconomic attainment, politics and living arrangements

Socioeconomic attainment

We study stratification outcomes in educational attainment, occupational attainment and income attainment. The general focus on educational and labour market outcomes leads us to study the social mobility process across generations. To what extent is social mobility dependent on institutional factors? Do income-equalizing policies promote educational equality and social mobility? What is the role of educational institutions on effects of social and ethnic origin on educational achievement and attainment? How does minimum wage affect (youth) labour markets? How does ethnic inequality in home ownership affect spatial and school segregation? How does the economic crisis affect inequalities among high-achievers? What is the career penalty of motherhood in different countries? 

Politics

With regard to political outcomes, we are mainly interested in the circumstances under which and the processes by which social inequalities become politically relevant. Social characteristics such as education, ethnicity and class may be more or less relevant for political outcomes, depending upon e.g. globalization and Europeanization. Globalization may particularly affect political outcomes of social groups that are most affected by it; mass migration and migration politics may strengthen the impact of ethnicity on political behaviour. Bridging geographical and political sciences we are also interested in how anti-immigration parties have diffused across local and regional entities. Moreover, we aim to study the reluctance to put inequality on the political agenda; why does inequality disappear from the political agenda in societies where we see no reduction in inequalities? In addition to electoral behaviour, we will also study other political outcomes such as voluntary participation and social trust. All these issues have a strong bearing on the legitimacy of politics in contemporary society.

Living arrangements

Under this rubric we focus predominantly on institutions affecting inequalities related to housing and to demographic transitions, such as leaving the parental home, union formation, parenthood, and divorce. There are large ethnic and social class differences in home ownership, in living arrangements, and in the division of household and paid labour within couples. How do national institutions affect the intergenerational transmission of home ownership and hence capital accumulation? To what extent are demographic transitions affected by class, education and ethnicity, and does this vary across countries? Demographic transitions and housing are also studied in relation to each other, such as with regard to the impact of divorce on residential mobility patterns, and how this impact varies across regional housing and labour markets. Such contextual effects have rarely been studied, and AMCIS will foster collaborations between demographers and sociologists that bring in the relevant expertise.

Empirical focus

Empirically the focus of AMCIS is on national and cross-national survey data, both in cross-sectional and in longitudinal form, for countries on which detailed institutional knowledge will help to problematize institutional impacts (i.e. mostly from OECD countries). We combine these survey data with country-level statistics obtained from the OECD, Worldbank, ILO and other sources. The group is well-known for expertise on multilevel modelling (AISSR-i3), event-history modelling (AISSR-i3, GEO, VU-SILC), multiple indicator models on stratification (VU-SILC), models for analyzing complete life cycles (VU-SILC), and models for electoral preferences (POL). The VU-SILC group is actively involved in the collection of cross-national datasets, including the International Social Survey Programme and the European Social Survey, and VU-SILC contributes to INSTINE by means of research staff/postdoc devoted to inequality studies using these data. The POL group is involved in collecting the new European Elections Survey. Moreover we will use longitudinal (panel) data of the European Community Household Panel, EU-SILC, and national panel datasets, including the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS) and the new Nederlandse Levensloop Studie (NELLS). In addition to these observational data, some experimental designs will also be implemented, mainly with the aim to study micro-level processes and policy effects.

(inter-)national collaborations

The INSTINE Speerpunt is strongly connected to the FP7 Network ‘Growing Inequality’s Impacts’ (GINI), that involves Salverda (AIAS, coordinator), Van de Werfhorst, Burgoon, and Van der Brug. The GINI Team integrates into a network of experts on economic, social and political cleavages across Europe, from the fields of economics, sociology, and political science. GINI evolved out of EQUALSOC, a still active FP6 Network of Excellence co-coordinated by Van de Werfhorst. EQUALSOC includes the top institutes in Europe on inequality research. Furthermore, INSTINE is connected to the FP7 projects PIREDEU (European Elections Studies, Wouter van der Brug), GOETE (Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe, Karsten).

Our own research projects resulting from VENI, VIDI and VICI and other grants from NWO are well integrated into this Speerpunt.