Structural inequality

Structural inequality is defined as a condition where one category of people are attributed an unequal status in relation to other categories of people. This relationship is perpetuated and reinforced by a confluence of unequal relations in roles, functions, decisions, rights, and opportunities. As opposed to cultural inequality, which focuses on the individual decisions associated with these imbalances, structural inequality refers specifically to the inequalities that are systemically rooted in the normal operations of dominant social institutions, and can be divided into categories like residential segregation or healthcare, employment and educational discrimination.

Globalization has a complex association with development and inequality, and mandates a new framework to help describe its effects. On one level, global competition in production can lead to productivity improvements that lead to a situation where industrial employment falls behind industrial output in a local market. This can have an enormous impact on developing economies that focus on industrialization. At the same time, the liberalization of trade policies may be the only method of securing growth for land-locked developing nations.

Combating structural inequality therefore often requires the broad, policy based structural change on behalf of government organizations, and is often a critical component of poverty reduction. In many ways, a well-organized democratic government that can effectively combine moderate growth with redistributive policies stands the best chance of combating structural inequality.

See: Structural inequality in education
One particularly influential form of structural inequality can be found in education, since education affects many other opportunities. Examples of institutionalized education-related racism include student tracking, access to college, access to technology, and school finance.

Globally, the problem of spatial and regional segregation is largely a question between urban and rural disparities. A study commissioned by the United Nations University WIDER project has shown that for the twenty-six countries included in the study, spatial inequalities have been high and on the increase, especially for developing nations. Many of these inequalities were traced back to “second nature” geographic forces that describe the infrastructure a society has in place for facilitating the trade of goods and employment between economic agents. Another dominant and related factor is the ease of access to bodies of water and forms of long distance trade like ports. The discrepancies between the growth of communities close to these bodies of water and those further away have been noted in cases between and within countries. In the United States and many other developed countries, spatial inequality has developed into more specific forms described by residential segregation and housing discrimination. This has especially come into focus as education and employment are often tied into where a household is located relative to urban centers, and a variety of metrics, from education levels to welfare benefits have been correlated to spatial data.

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