An international center for research into social inequality and solutions for a fairer society is being established at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU). The establishment of the Munich International Stone Center for Inequality Research (ISI) is being financed by the US Stone Foundation, which is donating five million dollars for this purpose. The founding director is sociologist Fabian Pfeffer, who returned to Germany after 19 years of research in the USA and was appointed to the chair for Social Inequality and Social Structures in 2023.
The fact that American companies support German universities is nothing new. The Technical University of Munich, for example, has received large sums of money from Google and Facebook in recent years. But the Stone Foundation is not a business corporation; rather, the foundation’s goal is to promote research into the foundations of an inclusive, more ecological and fairer society.
The American couple James and Cathleen Stone have transferred a large part of their assets to the foundation. “Building a global community of researchers on the topic of inequality will help to improve our world,” James Stone is convinced. He began his career as a lecturer in economics at Harvard University, was an advisor to President Jimmy Carter and is a member of the prestigious US Academy of Sciences. He became rich by founding an insurance company. His wife Cathleen is an environmental lawyer.
The Munich center will research social inequality in Germany, Europe and globally and will establish a worldwide network of scientists. “Social inequality is one of the great social challenges of our time. At the moment, the wealth of the few seems to know no bounds. When it comes to developing solutions, research must be internationally oriented and take new social models and political measures into account,” says Fabian Pfeffer.
The important characteristics of social inequality in modern welfare societies include education, occupation, income and, increasingly, wealth. In Germany, according to the Federal Government’s latest poverty and wealth report from 2021, the probability that people living in poverty are still poor five years later has risen from 40 percent in the 1980s to 70 percent today. But wealth inequality does not just mean the contrast between rich villa owners and welfare recipients or the homeless, says Pfeffer. Rather, it also means inequality of opportunity, poorer health and fewer educational opportunities in the general population.
The scientists at the ISI plan to work with empirical data such as tax data. They also want to cooperate with non-university institutions such as the two Munich-based Max Planck Institutes for Social Law and Social Policy and for Tax Law and Public Finance, and with public institutions. Through close exchange with students, doctoral students and visiting researchers, the center also aims to contribute to the internationalization of the LMU.