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Elena Rollán Martín University of Oxford The last twenty years have seen a notable increase in the public debate and interest over income and wealth inequality. Since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, many disciplines in the social sciences have taken up the mantle of analysing modern inequality––its causes, manifestations and consequences––to the point that it may seem further research on this area is akin to working away at an exhausted mine. I argue that there are still treasures to be discovered; the main one related to the dimension of geography. Although the advent of new technologies seems to have rendered geography irrelevant, place is still a fundamental aspect of our lives. Where we live, where we work, and where we spend our free time determine many of the resources we can access, the people we can meet, and the opportunities we can enjoy. Space can act as a generator of inequality, as when these resources and opportunities are unequally distributed, but also as a mediator of inequality, because different skills and personal attributes will be rewarded or punished differently across geographic locations (1). Indeed, the geographical aspect of inequality is, deservedly, receiving more attention in the existing social sciences literature. On this, I would point to the work done by Chetty et al (2) on the influence of geography in US intergenerational mobility as one of the influential and pioneering pieces of research on this topic. Nevertheless, the research still presents a range of knowledge gaps, and I believe that some truly groundbreaking work will be published in the years to come. Perhaps the most important one is the incorporation of regional perspectives and localised knowledges in geographic research. It is well known that the development of the post-industrial economy has destroyed much of the manufacturing industry structure of high-income countries. Deindustrialization has hollowed out the middle class, as well-paying and stable jobs for low-skilled workers in factories have been substituted for precarious and low-paying roles across the service sector (3). The geographic dimension of this process is well documented, if not necessarily well understood. There is some work being done here (4), which finds important regional differences in opportunities across Europe. We should expect further research on this area in the next few years, exploiting the potential of administrative and granular data (5). Importantly, income inequality is not the only challenge that needs to be considered from a regional geographic perspective. As welfare states have moved towards new policy paradigms for the new economic reality, they have tended to apply social investment strategies, policies that aim to train and prepare the population for a labour market where flexibility, precarity, and high skills are in demand (6). Nevertheless, these strategies falsely presuppose that citizens are able to take advantage of new opportunities––regardless of the structural barriers that often impact those of lower socioeconomic standing There is literature on how these policies tend to benefit middle class people and leave poorer citizens further behind (7). In many cases, this happens because disadvantaged people lack the knowledge of how to access these programmes. The differing configurations of social and cultural capital that people have are also a big factor in how much they can navigate and enjoy these opportunities (2). The literature on the risks and shortcoming of social investment is still emerging and has not reached a consensus. Taking this into account, I argue that the spatial perspective offers a new promising venue of research. If it is not so much the existence of opportunities but the ability to “hear about” them that influences their impact on the lower classes, then a thorough analysis of the networks of contacts and information that residential locations foster is key to understanding the potential for success of these strategies. Indeed, recent studies find that, in the US, the share of high socioeconomic status Facebook friends among individuals with low socioeconomic status is the strongest predictor of upward social mobility (8). The database that the authors constructed for their paper is publicly available (link), and has ZIP code information that hints at the importance of geographic location. These are two areas where a geographic perspective could deepen our understanding of inequality in all its manifestations. As data sources become more easily comparable across and within countries, we might even see a new shift in the literature, one that takes the given of physical space and leverages it to uncover valuable insights. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elena Rollán is a Senior Editor at the Graduate Inequality Review and is currently studying for a MSc in Comparative Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. REFERENCES (1) Galster, G. & Sharkey, P. (2017). Spatial Foundations of Inequality: A Conceptual Model and Empirical Overview. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 3(2), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2017.3.2.01 (2) Chetty, R. et al. (2014) Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), pp. 1553–1623, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju022 (3) Castells, M. (1976). The Service Economy and Postindustrial Society: a Sociological Critique. International Journal of Health Services, 6(4), 595–607. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45120089 (3) Castells, M. (1976). The Service Economy and Postindustrial Society: a Sociological Critique. International Journal of Health Services, 6(4), 595–607. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45120089 (4) Granström, O., & Engzell, P. (2023). The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in Europe. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/gzwha (5) Chapelle, G., Domenech Arumi, G. and Gobbi P. (2023). Housing, neighbourhoods and inequality. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_424-1 (6) Bonoli, G. (2007). Time Matters: Postindustrialization, New Social Risks, and Welfare State Adaptation in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 40(5), 495-520. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414005285755 (7) Cantillon, B., & Van Lancker, W. (2013). Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective. Social Policy and Society, 12(4), pp. 553-564. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746413000080 (8) Chetty, R. et al (2022). Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility. Nature 608, 108–121 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4
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