The research
Demographic trends reveal that modern societies have become more heterogeneous in terms of their ethnic composition. The concern about social diversity and its implications has received much scholarly attention and has become a prominent topic in most social sciences. The recent but already vast amount of published research examines the impact of ethnic diversity on critical societal variables such as economic performance and neighbourhood trust. However, today’s increasing diversity poses a range of challenges that clearly demand a response, as people living in mixed neighbourhoods are having contact with new cultures, norms, and values, or avoiding such encounters. Some scholars argue that in these contexts some group competition and conflict is inevitable, but it remains unknown how diversity may affect people’s quality of life. To address this crucial and pressing question, our project will work at the intersection of various social sciences to study how ethnic diversity impacts people’s well-being and health. It will comprise the largest diversity study to date, with several years of data from the UK and all around the world. Our team will analyse multiple datasets examining effects on self-reported data together with some preliminary biological analyses based on blood samples. The findings will identify risk factors as well as positive aspects of diversity that will inform leaders and policy makers in planning the broad range of diversity-related challenges of modern societies.
The project will use scientific evidence as a lever for policy change. It will target policies addressing equality, discrimination, and segregation with the aim of promoting tolerance, openness, and the representation of society’s diverse ethnic groups in all its domains. It will promote and balance interventions aimed at structural and governmental level with those operating in the workplace (e.g., disseminate public information about the health consequences of ethnic inequality and promote greater transparency of hiring practices in order to guarantee that individuals with different demographic characteristics are selected for certain jobs, thus mitigating discrimination).
Our goals
Data sources
Our research uses large cross-country datasets such as the World Values Survey, the European Social Survey, and the Latino Barómetro. In a second stage of the project, we will focus on national panel data from the UK and will work on the National Child Development Survey and Understanding Society.
