What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to define social reversibility in inequality and propose a framework for its measurement.

July 26, 20260 citationsOpen Access

Social Reversibility as a Dimension of Inequality — Fallback, Institutional Memory, and a Measurement Agenda (Anthropie Working Paper No. 8)

Key Points

The aim is to define social reversibility in inequality and propose a framework for its measurement.
Defines reversibility with a focus on fallback capacity and readmission regime.
Investigates four French quasi-experimental settings including recent legislative acts.
Develops a strategy for data access and specifies criteria for claim refutation.
Identifies a non-separability hypothesis between fallback capacity and institutional memory, dependent on readmission access.
Highlights distinct mechanisms of social reversibility that can inform inequality assessments.
Proposes a new measurement agenda to better capture recoverable options in inequality.

Abstract

Framework-and-agenda working paper (Anthropie Working Papers series, AWP-08; English edition of the French original, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21506320). Inequality is usually measured through levels and positions observed at a date (wealth, current income, credentials) and through trajectories (mobility); it is almost never measured through social reversibility — the capacity, assessed before a given attempt, to withstand its failure without a lasting closure of options. The paper defines reversibility as a conditional profile of recoverable options, articulates two functions (fallback capacity, readmission regime), separates the institutional tariff of failure, individual capacity, and access conditions, and states four pre-specified families of predictions — including a distinctive non-separability hypothesis between fallback and the institutional memory of failure, whose sign and shape depend on the circumventability of the readmission gate. Four French quasi-experimental settings are specified (the 2022 Lemoine Act, the 2013 removal of the 040 indicator, the Visale guarantee, non-take-up), with a data-access strategy and claim-by-claim refutation criteria.

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