This book argues that inequality is not just about numbers, but is also about lived, historical experience. It supplements economic research and offers a comprehensive stocktaking of existing thinking on global inequality and its historical development. The book is interdisciplinary, drawing upon regional and national perspectives from around the world while seeking to capture the multidimensionality and multi-causality of global inequalities. Grappling with what economics offers – as well as its blind spots – the study focuses on some of today’s most relevant and pressing themes: discrimination and human rights, defences and critiques of inequality in history, decolonization, international organizations, gender theory, the history of quantification of inequality and the history of economic thought. The historical case studies featured respond to the need for wider historical research and to calls to examine global inequality in a more holistic manner. The Introduction 'Chapter 1 Histories of Global Inequality: Introduction' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This open access book consists of 39 short essays that exemplify how interactions between inter- and trans-national interdependencies and domestic factors have shaped the dynamics of social policy in various parts of the world at different points in time. Each chapter highlights a specific type of interdependence which has been identified to provide us with a nuanced understanding of specific social policy developments at discrete points in history. The volume is divided into four parts that are concerned with a particular type of cross-border interrelation. The four parts examine the impact on social policy of trade relations and economic crises, violence, international organisations and cross-border communication and migration. This book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of social policy, global history and welfare state research from diverse disciplines: sociology, political science, history, law and economics. .

In Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s, Michael Franczak demonstrates how Third World solidarity around the New International Economic Order (NIEO) forced US presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to consolidate American hegemony over an international economic order under attack abroad and lacking support at home. The goal of the nations that supported NIEO was to negotiate a redistribution of money and power from the global North to the global South. Their weapon was control over the major commodities—in particular oil—that undergirded the prosperity of the United States and Europe after World War II. Using newly available archival sources, as well as interviews with key administration officials, Franczak reveals how the NIEO and "North-South dialogue" negotiations brought global inequality to the forefront of US national security. The challenges posed by NIEO became an inflection point for some of the greatest economic, political, and moral crises of 1970s America, including the end of golden age liberalism and the return of the market, the splintering of the Democratic Party and the building of the Reagan coalition, and the rise of human rights in US foreign policy in the wake of the Vietnam War. The policy debates and decisions toward the NIEO were pivotal moments in the histories of three ideological trends—neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and human rights—that formed the core of America's post–Cold War foreign policy.

Inequality endangers the fabric of our societies, distorts the functioning of democracy, and derails the globalization process. Yet, it has only recently been recognized as a problem worth examining. Why has this issue been neglected for so long? In Inequality: A Short History, Michele Alacevich and Anna Soci discuss the emergence of the inequality question in the twentieth century and explain how it is related to current issues such as globalization and the survival of democracy. The authors also discuss trends and the future of inequality. Inequality is a pressing issue that not only affects living standards, but is also inextricably linked to the way our democracies work.

Inequality endangers the fabric of our societies, distorts the functioning of democracy, and derails the globalization process. Yet, it has only recently been recognized as a problem worth examining. Why has this issue been neglected for so long? In Inequality: A Short History, Michele Alacevich and Anna Soci discuss the emergence of the inequality question in the twentieth century and explain how it is related to current issues such as globalization and the survival of democracy. The authors also discuss trends and the future of inequality. Inequality is a pressing issue that not only affects living standards, but is also inextricably linked to the way our democracies work.

Winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize, Karl Renner Institut A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Livemint Best Book of the Year One of the world’s leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice. “The data [Milanovic] provides offer a clearer picture of great economic puzzles, and his bold theorizing chips away at tired economic orthodoxies.” —The Economist “Milanovic has written an outstanding book...Informative, wide-ranging, scholarly, imaginative and commendably brief. As you would expect from one of the world’s leading experts on this topic, Milanovic has added significantly to important recent works by Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson and François Bourguignon...Ever-rising inequality looks a highly unlikely combination with any genuine democracy. It is to the credit of Milanovic’s book that it brings out these dangers so clearly, along with the important global successes of the past few decades. —Martin Wolf, Financial Times

How genomics reveals deep histories of inequality, going back many thousands of years. Inequality is an urgent global concern, with pundits, politicians, academics, and best-selling books all taking up its causes and consequences. In Inequality, Carles Lalueza-Fox offers an entirely new perspective on the subject, examining the genetic marks left by inequality on humans throughout history. Lalueza-Fox describes genetic studies, made possible by novel DNA sequencing technologies, that reveal layers of inequality in past societies, manifested in patterns of migration, social structures, and funerary practices. Through their DNA, ancient skeletons have much to tell us, yielding anonymous stories of inequality, bias, and suffering. Lalueza-Fox, a leader in paleogenomics, offers the deep history of inequality. He explores the ancestral shifts associated with migration and describes the gender bias unearthed in these migrations—the brutal sexual asymmetries, for example, between male European explorers and the women of Latin America that are revealed by DNA analysis. He considers social structures, and the evidence that high social standing was inherited—the ancient world was not a meritocracy. He untangles social and genetic factors to consider whether wealth is an advantage in reproduction, showing why we are more likely to be descended from a king than a peasant. And he explores the effects of ancient inequality on the human gene pool. Marshaling a range of evidence, Lalueza-Fox shows that understanding past inequalities is key to understanding present ones.