The Psychology of Inequality

• Inequality


  The state of not being equal, especially in status, rights, and access to opportunities
• Psychologists are concerned about inequality because it has negative emotional consequences, including stigmatization, perceived injustice, lower self-esteem, and lower health
• Inequality in education


  • Measured through data and numbers
  • Linked to socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, and disability
• Measuring inequality in education

  1. Open Gapminder

  2. Click on 'Life Expectancy' tab

  3. Click on 'Education' folder

  4. Select 'OWID Education Index'

  5. Explore the data
• The UK has significant inequality in education, with factors like socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, and disability contributing to attainment gaps
• Public sector expenditure in the UK (2014)


  • Defence
  • Public order & safety
  • Pensions
  • Transport
  • Welfare
  • Health Care
  • Recreation, culture & religion
  • Schools
  • Universities and further education
• Structural inequality is a social structure that has inequality already "built in", with hierarchical differences between people that affect access to resources and unequal opportunities
• Education inequality


  Can lead to income inequality, inequality of opportunity, and health inequality
• More unequal societies tend to have higher rates of ill health and social problems, which can be measured using the Gini index
• Inequality in education starts early, with socioeconomic status influencing brain development and school readiness
• Children from poor families are more likely to have poor qualifications and are less likely to go to university
• Significant links between SES and changes in brain structure, e.g., areas related to memory, executive control, and emotion
• By age three, being in poverty makes a difference equivalent to nine months' development in school readiness
• During their years at school, children in receipt of free school meals (a key indicator of poverty) do progressively worse on average at school than their peers
• Children who do badly at primary school are less likely to improve at secondary school if they are poor
• Children from poor families are more likely to have poor qualifications
• Young people with parents in manual occupations are far less likely than others to go to university and only 1 in 6 of students at top universities come from lower socio-economic backgrounds
• The poorer an area the pupil comes from the worse their GCSE performance, but picture different in London
• Ethnic variation in outcomes at later ages still remains
• Harder access to high-tariff universities
• Under-represented at Russell Group universities and on apprenticeship schemes
• Russell Group universities have lower levels of student admissions from people from ethnic minority backgrounds, as well as students from state schools and low-income backgrounds, indicating stratification within the higher education system in Britain
• Awarding gap and experience gap and this is different according to ethnicity
• Overall prevalence of ADHD is 3% to 10% in school-aged children
• ADHD is diagnosed in boys 3 to 4 times more often than in girls
• ADHD persists in 30% to 50% into adolescence and adulthood (symptom profile may change)
• ADHD


  • Strong genetic component (approx. 76%)
  • Perinatal factors – some evidence
  • Neurobiological deficits – growing evidence
  • Deprivation and family factors – important for course and outcome
  • The idea of epigenetics
• Children with ADHD came from families below the poverty line with average family income at £324 per week, compared to £391 for those whose child did not have ADHD
• The odds of parents in social housing having a child with ADHD was roughly three times greater than for those who owned their own homes
• At least one in five students with ADHD receive no school services despite experiencing significant academic and social difficulties
• Most evident for adolescents, youth from non-English-speaking, and/or lower-income families
• Governments tackle inequality through social policy
• Inequality in education is a global and persistent issue
• Numbers help us to understand inequality in education
• Data informs the design, delivery & evaluation of interventions