Graduate Center Masterclasses

What this course is about:

These are many ways to analyse individual well-being. We will start from the traditional approach followed in the Social Sciences based on command over economic resources and discuss the individual attitudes towards an unequal distribution of resources. We will then enrich this traditional approach with insights from Biology looking at variables related to DNA Methylation and study the role that poverty plays on aging.

Monday 24.2: Time 11.00-12.30

Income Distribution: traditional concepts of individual well-being

This lecture reviews the standard indices and orderings for measuring individual well-being, such as income inequality and poverty.

Monday 24.2: Time 14.00-17.00

Other measures of individual well-being (a): polarization and income deprivation.

Starting from income inequality and its best-known index, the Gini coefficient, this class will present the modification of the latter by Esteban and Ray (1994) to measure polarization. The alternative approach to capturing the shrinking middle class proposed by Wolfson (1994) will follow. The Gini coefficient turns out to be also a measure of income deprivation. Deprivation will be discussed and analyzed.

Tuesday 25.2: Time 11.00-12.30

Attitudes to income inequality: experimental and survey evidence

This lecture reviews some survey and experimental findings in the literature on attitudes to income inequality. We follow Clark and D’Ambrosio (2015) and classify these findings into two broad types based on the role played by the reference group: the normative and the comparative view.

Tuesday 25.2: Time 14.00-17.00

Other measures of individual well-being (b): social exclusion and material deprivation.

Building on the concept of relative poverty, the class aims to analyze other measures of well-being in EU countries, such as social exclusion and material deprivation. These measures are at the heart of the EU social agenda. The lecture will end with an analysis of the recent initiatives aimed at “going beyond GDP”.

The role of poverty in aging

There is an extensive literature in Biology that has shown how poverty get under the skin, leaving biological traces. This lecture introduces the recent biological approach to measuring aging – the epigenetic clocks – and discusses how poverty matters.