Stratification economics: historical origins and theoretical foundations

John Davis

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2024, vol. 40, issue 3, 475-485

Abstract: Stratification economics (SE) investigates how economies are organized around group inequalities, especially by race and gender but also by ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Its historical origins and theoretical foundations have both a structural strand that addresses how and a social behavioural strand. SE’s structural strand goes back to Ricardo and Marx regarding the relationship between growth and distribution, and then draws on recent economic theory of noncompeting groups and dual economy models of labour market segmentation. SE’s structural strand produces an inequality-based understanding of economics’ standard goods taxonomy. The social behavioural strand builds on Du Bois’s psychological wage concept, Veblen’s social ladders theory of emulation, Blumer’s theory of prejudice and stereotyping, and current social identity theory. SE’s social behavioural strand makes it possible to explain how discrimination selectively stigmatizes people’s social identities in order to reinforce existing intergroup inequalities.

Keywords: stratification economics; intergroup inequality; caste; social groups; Ricardo; Marx; Lewis; Du Bois; Veblen; Blumer; social identity theory; goods taxonomy; stigmatization; intersectionality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grae025 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Stratification economics: Historical Origins and Theoretical Foundations (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:40:y:2024:i:3:p:475-485.

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam

More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().