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Differences between the rich and the poor are often very evident and even shocking. In South Africa, for example, people with low income live completely different lives (going sometimes hungry, in neighborhoods with high crime rates, with lower quality healthcare) than people with high income. In other countries differences appear less marked. Economic inequality is a fascinating topic, full of challenges. Some challenges are normative: Which types of difference in income can be justified? Other challenges concern measurement: Which countries have high and which have low inequality? Is there a way of unambiguously ranking countries in terms of inequality? There are also challenges in understanding where inequality comes from, how it originates: what is the role of education? of the labor market? of family background? And there is also controversy on the consequences of inequality: Is there an inequality-efficiency trade off? What are the consequences of inequality for economic growth, and for politics? And finally, possibly the hardest question of all: what can be done to reduce inequality? This module will tackle some of these issues drawing on past and recent scholarship on the topic.
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