Defining and Measuring Inequality

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about ways of defining and measuring inequality, focusing in particular on: (i) social class, including the Registrar General’s Classification (1911), the Socio-Economic Classification (2008), and the Great British Class Survey (2013); (ii) geographical, such as at neighbourhood, regional and international levels; (iii) ethnicity, most notably the BAME classification used in government statistics, and critiques of this; (iv) the idea of intersectionality – that all of these factors interact to shape inequality.

About the lecturer

Professor Clare Bambra is Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University. She is a renowned expert in the field of health inequalities, and she has recently undertaken extensive research into the unequal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including leading SAGE’s independent report into this. Her recent publications include The Unequal Pandemic: COVID-19 and Health Inequalities (2021, co-author), Health in Hard Times: Austerity and Health Inequalities (2019, editor), and Health Divides: Where You Live Can Kill You (2016).