Welcome to the
Institute on Inequality and Social Structure

The Institute on Inequality and Social Structure promotes scholarship and education to reduce health, economic, and social inequalities. Our goals are to generate new knowledge across disciplinary boundaries about the causes and consequences of inequality; to train the next generation of scholars who will advance knowledge about the mechanisms that produce and reproduce inequalities; and to leverage scholarly knowledge in the service of social change.

Alongside substantial increases in economic productivity and prosperity, inequality has persisted and in some cases expanded in the U.S. during recent decades. For example, the distribution of household income became more unequal during the closing decades of the 20th century. While growing income inequality is a problem in its own right, it is also correlated with other forms of social, health and civic inequality. An expanding body of research has demonstrated that social position—including socio-economic status, gender, race, and nativity—is a key determinant not only of income, but of outcomes ranging from residence in safe and supportive neighborhoods to employment in fulfilling jobs, attendance in schools with exceptional learning environments, participation in political and civil society, and the receipt of quality social and health services.

Economic and social inequalities are frequently examined at the individual level. The framing often obscures the less readily observed structures—social, spatial, economic, policy and other—through which inequalities are produced, institutionalized, and reproduced. The mission of the Institute on Inequality and Social Structure is to advance knowledge about the structured dimensions of inequality. It brings together a group of faculty, researchers, students, and practitioners from within and beyond the School of Social Work who represent multiple disciplinary and practice traditions. Our commonality is our shared interest in investigating the causes and consequences of health, economic and social inequality. IISS pursues this mission through activities that

1. advance theoretical, methodological, and empirical knowledge in the study of inequality;
2. produce new scholars who use innovative and integrated theories and methods to study inequality; and
3. disseminate knowledge to influence intellectual and public policy agendas.

IISS will be chaired in 2005-6 by Professor Anna Haley-Lock.