Ozlem Onaran analyzes the political economy of the cost-of-living crisis in the United Kingdom. Onaran presents the long-term trends in the wage share, wealth inequality, labor’s bargaining power, and real wages in the UK.  She also analyzes trends in UK corporate profit margins within the context of the first and second waves of inflation in 2021-22.  The policy responses by the conservative governments and the Bank of England to the rise of inflation are then analyzed, and their limitations are assessed. The paper concludes with short-run and medium-run policy alternatives to the cost-of-living crisis.

Recent research on environmental inequality has extended its focus from ongoing pollution to legacy pollution by examining the geography of industrial brownfields. PERI researchers Michael Ash and James Boyce, along with Charlotte Bez, provide the first extensive brownfield analysis for a European country from an environmental inequality perspective. They demonstrate that French communities with higher percentages of foreign-born and unemployed persons are disproportionately more likely to be located near brownfields. This analysis provides crucial entry points for restorative environmental justice considerations and has important implications for Europe’s just transition and cohesion policies.

Since the early 1990s, abortion restrictions of various types and intensities have proliferated across the U.S. South and Midwest, especially since the 2010s. Raymond Caraher analyzes the effect of such abortion restrictions on abortion rates. Through utilizing a series of novel datasets, Caraher finds that restrictions have a substantially larger negative effect on abortion rates for counties that have a relatively large share of Black, Hispanic, or poor residents.  Overall, the results suggest that the repeal of Roe v. Wade will have a significant and unequal effect on abortion rates, with marginalized communities experiencing a greater impact.