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Lottery of birth
Lottery of birth

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An interdisciplinary issue

The complexities and breadth of the lottery of birth means it has to be treated as an interdisciplinary issue and you will be using a variety of disciplines as you study this course. These will include demography, development studies, health studies, family studies, sociology, comparative social policy, history, political science and economics.

Using these disciplines brings together different perspectives to focus on an issue, providing fresh insight and framing different questions. These methods can accelerate the ability to solve problems and provide a bridge for different ideas to feed into social and political change and perhaps inform policies that have the potential to address the lottery of birth.

Dr Pam Foley is the author of this course. She is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care (Children and Families) at The Open University. Her teaching and research focuses on child and family social policy and on European models of children’s services.