Until today, I hadn’t. It is a proposed subfield of economics that would focus on stratification — specifically, differences between racial groups regarding measures of well-being. So what?
As Duke University professor John Staddon explains in this AIER article, the economist pushing for recognition of Stratification Economics (SE) insists that everyone doing SE must refrain from entertaining the idea that group differences might be caused by anything other than a deliberately malevolent social structure.
Staddon quotes that economist, Duke professor William Darity:
The objective [of SE] was to perform bypass surgery on the argument that groups in a subordinate position are so ranked because of their own deficiencies or self-defeating behaviors. The idea that group-based inequalities are due to defective cultural habits and practices on the part of the subaltern (or subordinated) community poses a conceptual occlusion that requires circumvention.
Staddon rightly observes that this is not the way scholarship proceeds. We don’t presume to know that certain possible explanations are wrong, factually or “morally.”
Unfortunately, this sort “scholarship” seems to be advancing on many fronts. At least SE so far is not a recognized subfield.