ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some foundational distinctions relevant to the interaction of cumulative (dis)advantage (CDA) processes and social policy. As a systemic tendency of social life, the production of inequality is built into the basic reality-constructing processes that pervade social discourse. Such generic social processes, which are integral to everyday life, reproduce and sustain inequalities on a continuous basis. While the operation and outcomes of such processes can be influenced by intentional effort, the processes themselves cannot be changed. By contrast, deliberately created human processes stem from human intentionality and are devised and implemented to influence outcomes of interest. Such processes include social policies and other initiatives aimed to influence relevant aspects of social life, including circumstances of life-course adversity and inequality. Such policies, some of which are age-targeted, have been devised for every level (macro/meso/micro) of social-system operation. While such processes seek to ameliorate the production of inequality and adverse circumstances, the authors note that in some cases they are used to strengthen and defend the production of inequality. Whether they are effective in terms of their intentions, many policies also have unforeseen and unintended consequences.
