Assistant Professor Frederick Solt of the Department of Political Science has received a three-year grant of $72,526 per year from the National Science Foundation. The grant, which runs through July 2018, will enable Solt to create the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). SWIID aims to provide data on income inequality for the broadest possible sample of countries and years that are made as comparable as possible.
Income inequality is an enduring focus of inquiry in the social sciences that has attracted renewed attention from policymakers and the public. Economists, political scientists, sociologists, and other social scientists have long sought to explain why incomes are relatively equal in some countries and times and much larger disparities between rich and poor are found in others.
The effects of income inequality on other forms of social inequality, such as health disparities, and on other phenomena ranging from political violence to economic growth to democratic transitions are similarly vital questions. The reliability of the results of these investigations, and any policy interventions they suggest, depend crucially on the quality of the income-inequality data they employ; SWIID is therefore a data infrastructure project that is central to the promotion of scientific progress on these topics.