Frederick Solt ( @fredericksolt ) of the University of Iowa will deliver a keynote speech at the conference, “Politics and Inequality across Nations and Time: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches,” at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, December 12 – 14, 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

Professor Solt’s keynote title at the political inequality conference

“Economic Inequality, Demand for Redistribution, and Redistributive Outcomes: Building the Empirical Foundations for Dynamic Comparative Research.”

Abstract of Fred Solt’s keynote

“Does rising income inequality in a country yield greater demand for more redistributive policy among its citizens? Does greater public demand prompt more redistribution? The answers to both of these questions are clearly not simply yes or no, but conditional on other circumstances. Assessing hypotheses regarding these circumstances will require comparable data–on inequality, on public opinion, and on redistribution–across space and time. This paper takes up that task. It first evaluates the author’s long-running project, the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID), as a source of data on income inequality and redistribution for this purpose. It then applies the author’s new approach, Dynamic Comparative Public Opinion (DCPO), to overcome the sparsity and incomparability of available survey data and provide comparable estimates of public opinion regarding redistribution for many countries over many years. Finally, it offers an appraisal of whether the combination of these two datasets can serve as a sound basis for further investigation of these two questions on the consequences of income inequality for politics and policy.”

Frederick Solt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa whose interests are in comparative political behavior and political economy from a cross-national perspective. Professor Solt created and maintains the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). His research appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, and Social Science Quarterly, among others. For a full list of his publications and more information about SWIID, please visit his website: https://fsolt.org/

The conference is funded by Poland’s National Science Centre and a grant from the Polish Academy of Sciences, with organizational support from IFiS PAN, and CONSIRT – Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program of The Ohio State University and PAN (CONSIRT.osu.edu).

The conference is free and open to the public. Click here for more information about the conference.