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What is Social Inequality in Central and Eastern Europe?
Stephen Whitefield
stephen.whitefield@politics.ox.ac.uk
and
Matthew Loveless
matthew.loveless@politics.ox.ac.uk
EUREQUAL: http://eurequal.politics.ox.ac.uk/
Paper presented at CEELBAS Conference Session, ‘Emerging
dimensions of social inequality in Russia and Eastern Europe’,
St Antony’s College, Oxford, December 13, 2008
Work in Progress – Please DO NOT CITE
What is ‘social inequality’?
A vague concept compared with work on …
• Income inequality (Milanovic, 1998; Atkinson, 1999)
• Inequality of wealth (Cagetti and De Nardi, 2008)
• Labour market segmentation, e.g. by gender, ethnicity (Schrover et al,
2007)
• Welfare status (Layte and Whelan, 2003)
• Skills and training (Brown et al, 2008)
• Health inequality (Marmot and Wilkinson, 1999)
• Housing inequality (Morris and Winn, 1990)
Social inequality as a package of inequalities
The ‘CEELBAS’ working definition
“Social inequality refers to the ways in which socially-defined
categories of persons (according to characteristics such as
gender, age, ‘class’ and ethnicity) are differentially positioned
with regard to access to a variety of social ‘goods’, such as the
labour market and other sources of income, the education and
healthcare systems, and forms of political representation and
participation. These and other forms of social inequality are
shaped by a range of structural factors, such as geographical
location or citizenship status, and are often underpinned by
cultural discourses and identities defining, for example, whether
the poor are ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’.”
http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/socialinequality
A Eurequal working definition of social inequality…
… the structure of advantage and disadvantage in the
life chances and life outcomes of individuals and
families (health, happiness, income, wealth, social and
cultural opportunities, etc) that are significantly shaped
by citizens’ social and economic locations and identities
(labour market situation, social class, education, gender,
ethnicity, age, citizenship, etc), by other important
distributional mechanisms (social networks -corruption,
blat’; government institutions and policies), and by
national characteristics (economic and political
development).
The problem of packages in Central and Eastern Europe
Some research points to the fragmenting impact of Communist power
and command economies on the packaging of advantages and
disadvantages
• Housing (Szelenyi, 1987)
• Class fragmentation (Kende and Strmiska, 1987)
• Communist-era political economy (Bunce, 1985; Sabel and Stark,
1982)
The transitional character of markets and democracy may also limit the
emergence of ‘packages’ that one might expect in established market
democracies (Kitschelt, 1992)
The differential character of market and democratic development in
the region might lead us to expect differences in the form and extent
of packaging
Issues arising
Is there a social inequality package? How do packages vary
across countries?
Does our measure of social inequality packages correlate in
appropriate ways with some other predicted outcomes of social
advantage and disadvantage?
What kinds of people do well or badly in terms of the package of
social inequality? How do the determinants of social advantage
vary across countries?
What kinds of countries are more or less socially advantaged?
How unequal are countries in terms of the distribution of
advantages and disadvantages? And what kinds of countries are
more unequal than others?
The Eurequal surveys
Conducted in 13 countries in Spring, 2007
• Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia,
Ukraine
National probability samples of between 1000 and 2000
respondents
The packaging of social advantage and disadvantage
To what extent do the following ‘arenas’ in which goods may be
differentially distributed correlate with one another? As one
package, none, or many?
• Income
• Possessions
• Savings
• Employment benefits
• Housing situation
• Health
• Health access
• Educational access
• Cultural access
Table 1.
Factor
Loadings
Income3 Savings Access: Access: Access: Health House Situ. Benefits Stuff Eigenvalue N
Health Education Culture (difference)
3.04
Aggregate 0.3756 0.3821 0.8092 0.8294 0.8124 0.4500 0.3957 0.1351 0.6070 8419
(2.68)
2.66
Belarus 0.4883 0.2619 0.7934 0.8175 0.8246 0.2242 0.1508 0.2017 0.5154 669
(2.26)
2.78
Bulgaria 0.5600 0.3499 0.7786 0.7803 0.7600 0.3030 0.2958 0.0499 0.6092 433
(2.45)
2.62
Czech Rep 0.5557 0.3541 0.5961 0.7389 0.7174 0.1552 0.3926 0.3291 0.6947 587
(2.30)
2.66
Estonia 0.3634 0.3868 0.7774 0.8061 0.8071 0.0735 0.3903 0.1249 0.5514 604
(2.19)
2.47
Hungary 0.4148 0.3213 0.7357 0.7875 0.7786 0.1658 0.4075 0.1664 0.4527 479
(1.95)
3.19
Latvia 0.5138 0.3849 0.8343 0.8040 0.8378 0.4001 0.4077 0.2796 0.5768 660
(2.74)
3.47
Lithuania 0.5250 0.3905 0.8826 0.9045 0.8686 0.2551 0.4395 0.2430 0.6119 561
(3.09)
2.64
Moldova 0.3954 0.3325 0.7467 0.7403 0.7197 0.4173 0.5157 0.0207 0.5566 566
(2.14)
1.94
Poland 0.6076 0.4782 0.5171 n/a 0.5587 0.1109 0.5963 0.1593 0.6044 978
(1.72)
3.21
Romania 0.5394 0.3048 0.8081 0.8608 0.8441 0.2618 0.3826 0.2475 0.6657 969
(2.77)
2.71
Russia 0.4498 0.2981 0.8381 0.8359 0.7875 0.2667 0.2686 0.0823 0.4924 1190
(2.41)
2.19
Slovakia 0.4070 0.3079 0.6351 0.7368 0.6918 -0.039 0.3084 0.2640 0.5856 649
(1.74)
2.85
Ukraine 0.3152 0.2762 0.8467 0.8616 0.8533 0.348 0.2773 0.0025 0.5379 1052
(2.67)
Figure 1. Percentage contribution of each factor loading
to factor as a whole (pooled and by country)
What does the package of advantage and disadvantage
predict in terms of other aspects household economic
circumstances?
External validation exercise for our factor
If our factor picks up differences in the distribution of
advantage and disadvantages, then it should clearly be
associated with a range of other important household
economic circumstances
• Material deprivation
• Perceptions of changes in living standards
• Ability to buy medicine or pay utility bills
Table 2. Regression of assessments of social
inequality factor on to aspects of household
economic circumstances
b (se) Material Compariso Enough Enough
deprivation n of Living money to money to
OLS Standards buy pay utility
OLS medicine bills
Logit Logit
Social inequality 0.63*** 1.01*** 1.52*** 1.29***
factor (0.01) (0.01) (0.04) (0.04)
Constant 2.86*** 3.33*** 1.60*** 2.07
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.04)
R2 .41 .60 .24 .18
N 8351 8398 8395 8395
* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001
What kinds of countries are advantaged or disadvantages?
Differences across the region
• Russia and Ukraine are most disadvantaged on average, while Czech
Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Slovakia are most advantaged
Differences in economic and political development
• Growing countries have on average more advantages
• Politically freer countries are also more advantaged
Differences by levels of inequality
• More unequal countries (by comparison of gini’s) are also disadvantaged
Conclusions
There is a package – one package of social advantage and disadvantage
The package is strongly predictive of important household economic
outcomes and perceptions
The ‘usual suspects’ do well and badly and differences across countries appear
relatively weak in terms of the social determinants of advantage and
disadvantage
Countries that are more democratic, grow economically and are more
egalitarian have populations that are on average more advantaged than
countries that are not
In other words … Central and Eastern Europe does not appear to present
differently than states elsewhere …
… although until we can do the same analysis elsewhere we can’t be sure.
Still, the analysis of social inequality has a promising future.
