Research
Brown has a long tradition of research in the area of development and inequality. In the social sciences, over 35 faculty have research interests in this area. GPD is committed to supporting and promoting a wide range of research initiatives by faculty, students, and our partner institutions in development and inequality. As broad and as wide as current interests are, there are six areas where existing work and opportunities for new collaborations are of special interest. Each area has been designated as a GPD initiative and is described below:
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Global Governance and Inequality
The final initiative links questions of intranational inequality to international inequality. It thus forms the larger context in which the other four initiatives are embedded. Research on globalization over the past two decades has increasingly focused on examining transnational flows and emerging forms of global governance. In areas as diverse as law, economics, health, environment, … Read more -
Urban Transformation and Inequality
Urbanization in much of the developing world is outpacing job growth as well as the capacity of city governments to provide basic services and facilities to new urban residents. This has created new patterns of social and spatial exclusion, most notably the spread of slums and uncontrolled growth of urban fringe areas, and poses fundamental … Read more -
Public Health and Social Disparities
Large inequalities in access to health care and health outcomes in the developing world are well documented but not always well understood. Public health research has revealed the magnitude of the problem and has linked the resulting patterns to differences in gender, race, and class, but we know relatively little about the social, political, and … Read more -
Democratic Governance and Participation
Institutions in the developing world often reflect the interests of the powerful and privileged and, as such, fundamentally distort political and economic incentives (American Political Science Association, 2008). This is a particular challenge to democratic governance in the developing world. Even in the more consolidated democracies, minorities, women, and lower classes can not make full … Read more -
Climate Change and Environmental Protection
Environmental crises first strike the poor and dispossessed, who have the least resources to avoid or prepare for, cope with, and recover from natural and technological disasters like climate change and chemical contamination events. Inequality and the environment are recurring themes for major research initiatives across the university. The Environmental Change Initiative seeks to foster … Read more -
Markets and Social Inequality
It is hard to overstate the importance of markets in determining the changing patterns of inequality that have emerged in the last two decades. Sustained economic growth in Brazil, India, and China, which has raised incomes of 2 billion of the world’s poor and thus reduced inequality across nations, has been led by a rapid … Read more
