Wealth Inequality and Mobility Workshop

ECSR Thematic Workshop

“Wealth Inequality and Mobility”

December 6-7, 2018, University of Luxembourg, Belval Campus

The new role of wealth in social mobility, family transmission, opportunity, stratification and class analysis

“Wealth is back”, to paraphrase Piketty and Zucman’s (2014) famous paper. The wealth-to-income ratio W/I has doubled over the last generation in the US, France and in many other countries. As a consequence, wealth-based inequalities have become a major dimension in the social structure - much more than expected in the 1970s at the climax of the wage earner society. With the parallel increase in housing prices, wealth is now more than a simple perturbation in the occupational, earnings or educational based system of stratification. 

Housing constraints, consumption of durable goods, access to education, social mobility, reproduction, family solidarity and transmission, etc. are major dimensions of stratification that could be strongly impacted by wealth accumulation. Their consequences in terms of life course, gender and ethnic differentiation, class structure etc. can no longer be neglected. Welfare regimes themselves might be influenced by those changes, since investment in skills (tuition, fees and board) retirement, health, cost of seniors' dependence are directly linked to wealth accumulation regimes.

The aim of this workshop is to propose a multidisciplinary vision of the development of wealth studies in sociology, economics, social policy, etc. and related disciplines.