May 20, 2026
Jakob Dirksen, a visiting researcher at the Stone Center, recently presented his work on measuring multidimensional inequalities in the U.S. The research assesses well-being and inequalities across various facets of life — such as income and wealth, health, education, social relationships, political participation, experiences of discrimination, and employment — based on two online surveys conducted in early 2025. Dirksen, who is a visiting researcher at the Stone Center from May through mid-July, gave his presentation as the last installment of the Spring 2026 Multidisciplinary Seminar Series. He is based at the London School of Economics, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in social policy and the principal researcher of the Perceptions of Inequality Research Programme at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and at the University of Oxford, where he is the senior research and policy officer at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. In this interview, he discusses his current work and his research goals for the summer.
What are you planning to work on during your time at the Stone Center?
Dirksen: I’m working on a few different projects, including the research I presented at the Seminar Series. This project focuses on measuring well-being and inequality across different aspects of life, seeking to help us understand which groups in the U.S. are worse off than others, how so, and how we can use such measurement tools for better policy-making. In addition to inequality measurement, I am also working on a few projects in which we study perceptions and misperceptions of inequality, such as people’s perceptions of their own relative position and whether inequalities are increasing or declining — but also normative perceptions, including beliefs, and attitudes about fairness and redistributive policies, for example.
Are your projects on perceptions cross-national?
Dirksen: Yes, we look at various countries, including the U.S. We’re currently doing surveys and survey experiments in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, and Mexico, for instance. The evidence we gather here will hopefully help us better understand distributive attitudes and preferences. What principles do people think should be applied when allocating places in kindergartens, for example, or when deciding who gets admitted into a program training future brain surgeons? According to what principles should things be distributed in society? How, for example, should governments distribute resources across subnational regions? We’re hoping to better understand how much it matters what is distributed and among whom — in terms of whether people favor equalizing resources or opportunities, favor prioritizing the worse-off or those who work hardest or produce most, or whatever they think might be good for social stability.
What drew you to those particular research questions?
Dirksen: I am interested in how we can develop more sophisticated ways of measuring things that better align with our often more complex understandings of concepts like well-being, inequality, or poverty. I also try to think about how governments can make better policies if they use some of these methods and findings for evidence-based policymaking. If a government wants to do something about inequality or improve the lives of those who are less well-off, then how should we go about helping them do that?
Our research on perceptions is also very policy-relevant, from a more cognitive-behavioral perspective: Few people know what a Gini is, let alone what the Gini coefficient of their country is or how it’s changed over time. But of course we all have our own views about the state of the world, including inequalities and where things are going for us and our societies. Such perceptions are often not factually accurate, but they can often be meaningful — and more meaningful than a Gini, for example — in informing people’s behavior, including how they vote, become otherwise politically active, and so on. We are often actually quite bad at correctly estimating inequalities and where we fit in various distributions. I’m interested in understanding that gap a bit better, how we can perhaps help close it, and understanding the consequences of these (mis)perceptions, for example their association with things like support for populism, mistrust in government, and wider polarization.
How will your time here will help with these particular projects?
Dirksen: Much of my work is on or includes the U.S., and for that alone, it’s great to be here. There are so many scholars here at the Stone Center who know the U.S. context much better than I do. It’s great for me to be able to present and discuss my work with all of them. And also, of course, it’s very interesting to be able to learn from the work that everyone else here is doing on these topics.
