The new collaborative platform, the Inequality Hub, aims to advance the understanding of how socioeconomic inequalities between societies and social groups are perceived, legitimized and institutionalized. Its goal is to generate new knowledge on the mechanisms that hinder social progress and identify potential ways to enable social change.

Simone M. Schneider, a professor with the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, is responsible for the platform and principal investigator of the European project PERGAP, of which this initiative is part of. “The Inequality Hub aims to become a leading platform for the dissemination and exchange of cutting-edge research between disciplines to make data-based recommendations that help reduce inequalities within and between countries”, she explains.

The Inequality Hub, which mainly uses country comparative data and quantitative research methods, is open to researchers (who can share and promote their own research), policymakers, students, and the general population. All of them can use the platform to explore research on the root causes and consequences of existing inequalities, and to provide knowledge and create a network.

Simone M. Schneider: “The Inequality Hub aims to become a leading platform for the dissemination and exchange of cutting-edge research between disciplines to make data-based recommendations that help reduce inequalities within and between countries”

Some of the key questions that research promoted on the platform seeks to answer are: How do we perceive and legitimize income disparities and related social policies? What are our emotional responses and behavioural reactions to growing gaps in income and wealth? How are our perceptions of inequality and justice shaped in our socio-political environments? And, how do public institutions impose and perpetuate inequalities in society?

Research in the framework of the European project PERGAP

The Inequality Hub is part of one of the work packages of the project “The (Mis)Perception of Economic Inequality: The Impact of Welfare State Institutions on Social Perception and Preference Formation (PERGAP)”, of which Simone M. Schneider is the principal investigator, being conducted by UPF in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich (Germany).

With comparative data from more than 50 countries, PERGAP aims to develop new instruments to evaluate and compare the institutional structure of welfare states, and also analyse its impact on the perception and justification of economic inequalities at various times and in different structural and cultural contexts.

The PERGAP project, which was launched in December 2022, is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and is endowed with about 1.5 million euros, within the framework of the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. Simone M. Schneider works together with a research team currently composed by Javier Sánchez Busó, linked to UPF, and Mei Araki, from the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.

For more information, please visit: www.inequalityhub.org