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Income inequality rose in Germany since the 1970s. To quantify the impact of different socio-economic trends on inequality, the author constructs counterfactual distributions of net household income with rich German data from the Microcensus in 1976 and 2011. The procedure allows to study the effect of marital sorting in education and includes indirect effects such as the influence of education on employment. When comparing the income distribution in West Germany for 1976 and 2011, the author finds that the prevalence of singlehood accounts to a large extent for the observed increase in inequality. The inequality increase is also associated with a change of employment among males and single females. When comparing West and East Germany in 2011, the author finds that the stronger labour market attachment of East German married females combined with the high East German unemployment produces even more income inequality than the West German employment structure. Moreover, the smaller household size boosts inequality in East Germany, whereas education works against it. In both comparisons, the author finds no significant impact of positive assortative mating in education or ageing.

Health is distributed unequally by occupation. Workers on a lower rung of the occupational ladder report worse health, have a higher probability of disability and die earlier than workers higher up the occupational hierarchy. Using a theoretical framework that unveils some of the potential mechanisms underlying these disparities, three core insights emerge: (i) there is selection into occupation on the basis of initial wealth, education and health, (ii) there will be behavioural responses to adverse working conditions, which can have compensating or reinforcing effects on health and (iii) workplace conditions increase health inequalities if workers with initially low socio-economic status choose harmful occupations and don’t offset detrimental health effects. We provide empirical illustrations of these insights using data for the Netherlands and assess the evidence available in the economics literature.

The National Assembly of Wales has powers in 20 devolved policy areas, including education, economic development, health, housing, social services and local government. Given the social democrat character of the first three elected assemblies in Wales, Wales would appear well placed to interrupt the reproduction of socio-economic disparities. However, Wales is a relatively poor part of the United Kingdom. In this chapter, we consider economic inequality among the Welsh population set within the policy and economic context. Analysis demonstrates how the Welsh labour market has responded to the economic crisis and how this has affected both inequality within Wales and spatial inequality that exist across the United Kingdom. The development of equalities and anti-poverty policy making in Wales and how these have so far been treated separately in policy are examined. The chapter concludes by considering the possibility for the new and distinct policy levers in Wales in relation to the integration of anti-poverty, employment, economic and equality policies that have the potential to address the combined impact of socio-economic inequalities in the future.

Within the past twenty years, the transition to adulthood has become a burgeoning area of research. The status attainment process, an early model for transition to adulthood research, has given way to research focusing on singular outcomes such as completing formal education, leaving home, obtaining employment, forming a union through marriage or cohabitation, and becoming a parent. As young adults continue to delay family formation, some argue that one’s first experience of heterosexual intercourse is also a symbol of adult status (Meier, 2001). Although most scholars agree that these outcomes along with chronological age symbolize being an adult, relatively few empirical studies examine them as inter-dependent transitions. A recent comparison of these indicators by gender, race, and social class is also needed.

Purpose: This chapter aims to study the issue of technological inequality in the modern world economy from the position of assessment of the scale of global conflict and the scenario of its development depending on conflict management.

Design/methodology/approach: The performed review of literature sources has shown that they provide an insufficient scientific basis for determining the level of technological inequality in the modern world economy from the position of assessment of the scale of the global conflict and scenarios of its development depending on conflict management. To fill this gap in the system of scientific knowledge, we use the method of comparative and correlation analysis of statistical data. The research objects are China and the United States, as well as other countries of the world that have the highest level of technological development, trade, and digitalization.

Findings: This chapter provides a review of factors that determine scientific arguments in favour of technological inequality of countries, which leads to a global conflict. Many forms of inequality have a socio-economic character and are connected to access to the main services (healthcare, education, or accommodation), as well as incomes and access to the sources of income, especially in the sphere of employment. The deficit of decent work and inequality turned the COVID-19 pandemic from the crisis of public healthcare into the crisis of employment and social conflict, which influenced the subsistence of millions of employees. There is a real risk that without comprehensive and well-coordinated political actions, the increase in inequality and reduction of general progress in the labour sphere will be preserved in many dimensions. There’s a need for the measures of international policy to provide developing countries with access to vaccines and financial support, including through restructuring of debts.

Originality/value: It is proved that after the creation of the UN, the nature of conflicts and violence underwent serious changes. Conflicts take fewer human lives but last longer, and the frequency of conflicts between groups within a country is higher than the frequency of international conflicts. In certain parts of the world, crimes on a gender basis are increasing in numbers. Besides, technologies allow using robots, drones, cyberattacks, viruses, and hackers for military purposes. At the same time, international cooperation is weak, similar to the global ability to prevent and regulate conflicts and all possible forms of violence. Technological progress changes the character of the development of conflicts. Achievements in the sphere of AI and machine learning will play an important role in this process of transformation, so the character of threats from the government and non-government subjects will change. The use of AI raises the precision of cyberattacks and physical and biological attacks, making the identification of attackers very difficult.

This paper reports an analysis of the evolution of equity in the utilisation of health care in Spain over the period 1987–2001, a time span covering the development of the modern Spanish National Health System. Our measures of utilisation are the probabilities of visiting a doctor, using emergency services and being hospitalised. For these three measures, we obtain indices of horizontal inequity from microeconometric models of utilisation that exploit the individual information in the Spanish National Health Surveys of 1987 and 2001. We find that by 2001, the system had improved insofar as differences in income no longer lead to differences in utilisation given the same level of need. However, tenure of private health insurance leads to differences in utilisation given the same level of need, and its contribution to inequity has increased over time, both because insurance is more concentrated among the rich and because the elasticity of utilisation for the three services has also increased.