ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a range of equity categories at the individual/community level, including poverty/socioeconomic status (SES), gender, disability, race, ethnicity, culture and language, mobility/migration status, and rural/urban residence. Education not only facilitates the structural transformation of the economy, but also increases the effectiveness of the transformation. Links between educational and economic inequality abound, at the aggregate, the institutional and individual level. Socioeconomic inequalities in education may have seen less reduction over the past two decades than has gender or other inequalities. In extreme cases of chronic poverty, individuals remain poor across their lifetimes and 'transmit' that poverty to their children, creating 'intergenerational poverty', a phenomenon sometimes discussed in terms similar to a hereditary disease. The WHO recognizes 'disability' as an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions. Within-country inequality in education arises from the gap between urban and rural populations.
