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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 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, […]

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The spring issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to Feminist Foreign Policy, to try to gauge its potential but also the risk that it could be perceived as another attempt by the west to impose its vision on the global south.

In this issue, we also look at the human cost of the war in Ukraine, analyse the increasing connection between the centre right and the far right, and explore the difficulties, particularly for women, of finding a good work-life balance and living good working lives.


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Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

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ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


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Eurofound advertisement

New Europe-wide survey on living and working conditions

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