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Kate Pickett


Kate Pickett is professor of epidemiology, deputy director of the Centre for Future Health and associate director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, all at the University of York. She is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018).

Kate Pickett

The False Economy of Cutting Disability Benefits

Kate Pickett 28th April 2025

Financial insecurity destroys lives. Slashing disability benefits isn’t reform—it’s cruelty disguised as cost-saving.

How Inequality Fuels the Cosmetic Surgery Boom

Kate Pickett 27th January 2025

Rising inequality drives a global surge in cosmetic procedures.

The most wonderful time of the year

Kate Pickett 14th November 2022

The splurge of Christmas consumerism, especially in Britain, Kate Pickett writes, is partly driven by status anxiety.

Here we go again …

Kate Pickett 12th September 2022

The cost-of-living crisis, Kate Pickett writes, follows a familiar path of hugely unequal burdens.

The paradox of inequality

Kate Pickett 6th June 2022

Kate Pickett explains how to turn the vicious circle of inequality and social mistrust into a virtuous one.

Class in the classroom

Kate Pickett 4th April 2022

Nominally egalitarian education systems, Kate Pickett writes, can in reality reproduce deep social inequalities.

The story versus the statistic

Kate Pickett 31st January 2022

Kate Pickett ponders how social scientists can bring structural inequalities to light when media focus on individual lives.

How it feels to be a rank outsider

Kate Pickett 22nd November 2021

Young working-class people may have an aversion to being categorised on the social ladder. But that doesn’t make the ladder go away.

Coming second in the game of life

Kate Pickett 27th September 2021

‘We don’t want to decapitate the tall poppies,’ said Boris Johnson in July. Yet for Kate Pickett his ‘levelling up’ ambitions will necessitate flattening the whole social gradient.

Pushed over the cliff-edge

Kate Pickett 28th June 2021

Kate Pickett argues the pandemic has not only massively affected public health but compounded the unhealthy effects of years of job insecurity.

What price a life?

Kate Pickett 3rd May 2021

Kate Pickett widens the panorama from the all-consuming coverage in Britain of the death of Prince Philip to ask why human lives and labours are so differentially valued.

Fissures that tear us apart and pressures that weigh us all down

Kate Pickett 8th March 2021

Kate Pickett contends in a new Social Europe column that inequalities go together—and so their opponents shouldn’t get drawn into rivalry.

Reducing Inequality: An Essential Step For Development And Wellbeing

Kate Pickett 24th January 2014

Inequality is emerging as a central issue for the post-2015 development agenda and the establishment of the sustainable development goals. Inequalities in income and wealth cause economic instability, a range of health and social problems, and create a roadblock to the adoption of pro-environment strategies and behaviour. Social and economic inequalities tear the social fabric, […]

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Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


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WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

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