Department Homepage
The College of Arts & Sciences
Inequality lies at the heart of current debates about opportunity and equity, implicating numerous contemporary policy issues. Public and scholarly interest in inequality has intensified, not merely because of historic increases in income and wealth disparity in the United States and other advanced industrial countries, but also because inequalities of race, ethnicity, gender, and social class are evolving in dramatic and complicated ways. Cornell University is a leading center of scholarship on inequality, drawing strength from its many departments and college
Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Inequality (CSI) is devoted to understanding patterns, causes, and consequences of social and economic inequality. CSI fosters new and cutting-edge research, trains undergraduate and graduate students, encourages the exchange of ideas among inequality researchers, and disseminates research findings to a broader public. It supports research and knowledge that is evidence-based and systematic, whether it is “basic” research that develops formal models of the social processes that underpin inequality or “applied” research that assesses the intended or unintended consequences of policies that affect equality of opportunity.
CSI is based in the Sociology Department in the College of Arts and Sciences, but has more than 100 Faculty Affiliates from around campus. Faculty affiliates study a diverse range of topics, including:
Click here to learn more about the minor in Inequality Studies, including our new Health Equity Track.
Neil Cholli, Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in economics, has received a grant from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth to study how inequality affects economic growth and well-being in the U.S.
Read more
The program provides undergraduates with summer opportunities to conduct research with and be mentored by faculty from across the college.
Read more
“Gender plays out in many different ways across the world...even when both spouses agree on wanting more sons than daughters, this isn’t consistently correlated with girls getting less education," said sociologist Vida Maralani.
Read more
Researchers have found that when it comes to politics, Black and Latino residents of rural America differ far less, if at all, from their urban counterparts than do non-Hispanic white residents.
Read more
Coming from the University of Toronto, where he was the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Loewen began his five-year appointment as the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Aug. 1.
Read more
Only 36% of the gender segregation seen among college-educated workers is tied to their undergraduate degrees, a new study finds.
Read more
White guests favor Airbnb properties with white hosts, but are more inclined to rent from Black or Asian hosts if they see featured reviews from previous white guests, Cornell research finds.
Read more