Automating Inequality
Eubanks's account of three American systems that automate decisions about welfare, housing and child protection, and of how the burden of their errors falls on the people least able to contest them.
Book · 2018Sources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Publisher bibliography, hardcover ISBN/date, author and case-study synopsis; catalogue identity matching.
- Macmillan: Automating Inequality
Title, Virginia Eubanks, and argument about automated welfare, housing and child-protection systems.
- Wikidata entity API: Automating Inequality
Inspected entity label and description for identifier matching only; does not validate the work’s argument.
- OpenLibrary work API: Automating Inequality
Inspected work title and linked author identities; catalogue identity does not establish a particular edition or validate the content.
- Pan Macmillan: Automating Inequality, hardback
Virginia Eubanks, ISBN 9781250074317, 23 January 2018, St. Martin’s Press, and three case-study settings.
- OpenLibrary linked author record
Author identity checked against the linked catalogue work; not used to establish the work’s factual argument.
- OpenLibrary linked author record
Author identity checked against the linked catalogue work; not used to establish the work’s factual argument.
What this check doesn’t establish
- Publisher synopsis and catalogue records checked, not the complete book or independent case investigations.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
Three case studies from the United States: the automation of welfare eligibility in Indiana, an electronic registry used to allocate housing to homeless people in Los Angeles, and a predictive risk model used in child protection in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
The argument is that these systems are not neutral administrative upgrades but decisions about who gets scrutinised, and that they concentrate that scrutiny on people who face substantial obstacles in contesting decisions. It provides an American comparison with the Dutch and Australian cases recorded here, and is cited in nl-toeslagenaffaire.
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/works/eubanks-automating-inequality.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-26