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Lesson 7, Topic 5
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Inequality – so what? Analysing societal well-being

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Activity title

Inequality – so what? Analysing societal well-being 

Overview

Participants analyse the relationship of societal well-being and inequality in small groups. 

Objective

To understand how welfare regimes are connected to inequality and different indicators of societal well-being

Materials

Printouts of graphics showing different effects of inequality

Time

25 – 35 minutes

Group size

Works for all group sizes

Instructions for trainers

  1. Ask the participants to build small groups of 3 to 4 people and let each group pick one or two out of the following topics: Child-wellbeing, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, mental health, obesity, physical health, teenage births.
  2. Ask the group to analyse the figures and describe how three groups of countries are located – Which country group shows the highest and which the lowest level of inequality? How do the country groups score on the indicator of the graph? The country groups are as follows: Countries A: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland; Countries B: Germany, Austria, France; Countries C: USA, UK, Australia.
  3. Go around as the groups are working to assist them in case they have questions.
  4. Ask some groups to present the outcome of their analysis to the whole group and visualise the results for country groups A, B and C on a board.
  5. Afterwards, ask about the common denominator of the countries within one group.

Debriefing and evaluation

For debriefing the exercise read chapter 2.1 “How traditional welfare regimes deal with inequality”. Tell the participants that the country groups were formed according to their welfare regimes. Introduce the welfare regimes and conclude by emphasising that different welfare regimes lead to different levels of inequality, which come along with the different societal well-being effects that were analysed. 

Tips for trainers

This exercise connects well with the Inequality Speed-Dating exercise. 

As an alternative to working with printouts, participants can also work with the graphics online: https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level 

Challenges that might occur:  If participants are not used to interpreting graphs that might be challenging for them. If you think this is the case for several participants of the group, first introduce them to it by analysing one graph for the whole group. Otherwise, go through the room and answer questions/help where needed. 

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