WESOREL: Wealth and Social Cohesion
Summary
This project investigates whether the increasing gap between the wealthy elite and the general population undermines social cohesion. If the lifestyles, networks, opportunities, and world views of the wealthiest members of a given society and others diverge, the latter may start questioning their belief in equal opportunity, trust in government, or civic engagement more broadly. That is, high and increasing relative wealth inequality may pose a direct challenge to social cohesion. In this project, we seek to develop novel measures of relative wealth that capture how far the very rich have pulled away from the rest of society. To that end, the project will combine cross-national survey data analyses with in-depth case studies and survey experiments in Germany, Chile, the UK, and the US. This multi-method approach allows us to examine macro-level drivers of the wealth-cohesion link across varied institutional contexts, as well as micro- and meso-level factors within the four focus countries. In sum, we aim to understand the empirical relationship between relative wealth inequality and social cohesion and to explain its underlying drivers. We will also distribute an open-access database and findings to stakeholders in science, policy, and the public.