Drawing on econometric evidence and in-depth studies of West Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, this book explores how horizontal inequalities - ethnic, religious or racial - are a source of violent conflict and how political, economic and cultural status inequalities have contributed. Policies to reverse inequality would reduce these risks.

Today's leading economists weigh in with a new "dashboard" of metrics for measuring our economic and social health "What we measure affects what we do. If we focus only on material well-being—on, say, the production of goods, rather than on health, education, and the environment—we become distorted in the same way that these measures are distorted." —Joseph E. Stiglitz A consensus has emerged among key experts that our conventional economic measures are out of sync with how most people live their lives. GDP, they argue, is a poor and outmoded measure of our well-being. The global movement to move beyond GDP has attracted some of the world's leading economists, statisticians, and social thinkers who have worked collectively to articulate new approaches to measuring economic well-being and social progress. In the decade since the 2008 economic crisis, these experts have come together to determine what indicators can actually tell us about people's lives. In the first book of its kind, leading economists from around the world, including Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Elizabeth Beasely, Jacob Hacker, François Bourguignon, Nora Lustig, Alan B. Krueger, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, describe a range of fascinating metrics—from economic insecurity and environmental sustainability to inequality of opportunity and levels of trust and resilience—that can be used to supplement the simplistic measure of gross domestic product, providing a far more nuanced and accurate account of societal health and well-being. This groundbreaking volume is sure to provide a major source of ideas and inspiration for one of the most important intellectual movements of our time.

Several studies of civil war have concluded that economic inequality between individuals does not increase the risk of internal armed conflict. This is perhaps not so surprising. Even though an individual may feel frustrated if he is poor compared with other individuals in society, he will not start a rebellion on his own. Civil wars are organized group conflicts, not a matter of individuals randomly committing violence against each other. Hence, we should not neglect the group aspect of human well-being and conflict. Systematic inequalities that coincide with ethnic, religious, or geographical cleavages in a country are often referred to as horizontal inequalities (or inter-group inequalities). Case studies of particular countries as well as some statistical studies have found that such inequalities between identity groups tend to be associated with a higher risk of internal conflict. But the emergence of violent group mobilization in a country with sharp horizontal inequalities may depend on the characteristics of the political regime. For example, in an autocracy, grievances that stem from group inequalities are likely to be large and frequent, but state repression may prevent them from being openly expressed. This paper investigates the relationship between horizontal inequalities, political environment, and civil war in developing countries. Based on national survey data from 55 countries it calculates welfare inequalities between ethnic, religious, and regional groups for each country using indicators such as household assets and educational levels. All the inequality measures, particularly regional inequality, are positively associated with higher risks of conflict outbreak. And it seems that the conflict potential of regional inequality is stronger for pure democratic and intermediate regimes than for pure autocratic regimes. Institutional arrangements also seem to matter.

This book evaluates the extent to which post-conflict reconstruction has addressed problems of horizontal inequalities through country case studies on Burundi, Rwanda, Nepal, Peru, Guatemala, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Afghanistan, and four thematic studies on macro-economic policies, privatisation, PRSP's, and employment generation.

This open access book provides an extensive treatment of Hardy inequalities and closely related topics from the point of view of Folland and Stein's homogeneous (Lie) groups. The place where Hardy inequalities and homogeneous groups meet is a beautiful area of mathematics with links to many other subjects. While describing the general theory of Hardy, Rellich, Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg, Sobolev, and other inequalities in the setting of general homogeneous groups, the authors pay particular attention to the special class of stratified groups. In this environment, the theory of Hardy inequalities becomes intricately intertwined with the properties of sub-Laplacians and subelliptic partial differential equations. These topics constitute the core of this book and they are complemented by additional, closely related topics such as uncertainty principles, function spaces on homogeneous groups, the potential theory for stratified groups, and the potential theory for general Hörmander's sums of squares and their fundamental solutions. This monograph is the winner of the 2018 Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize, a prestigious award for books of expository nature presenting the latest developments in an active area of research in mathematics. As can be attested as the winner of such an award, it is a vital contribution to literature of analysis not only because it presents a detailed account of the recent developments in the field, but also because the book is accessible to anyone with a basic level of understanding of analysis. Undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers from any field of mathematical and physical sciences related to analysis involving functional inequalities or analysis of homogeneous groups will find the text beneficial to deepen their understanding.

The need for informed analyses of health policy is now greater than ever. The twelve essays in this volume show that public debates routinely bypass complex ethical, sociocultural, historical, and political questions about how we should address ideals of justice and equality in health care. Integrating perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and public health, this volume illuminates the relationships between justice and health inequalities to enrich debates. Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice explores three questions: How do scholars approach relations between health inequalities and ideals of justice? When do justice considerations inform solutions to health inequalities, and how do specific health inequalities affect perceptions of injustice? And how can diverse scholarly approaches contribute to better health policy? From addressing patient agency in an inequitable health care environment to examining how scholars of social justice and health care amass evidence, this volume promotes a richer understanding of health and justice and how to achieve both. The contributors are Judith C. Barker, Paula Braveman, Paul Brodwin, Jami Suki Chang, Debra DeBruin, Leslie A. Dubbin, Sarah Horton, Carla C. Keirns, J. Paul Kelleher, Nicholas B. King, Eva Feder Kittay, Joan Liaschenko, Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Mary Faith Marshall, Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Jennifer Prah Ruger, and Janet K. Shim.