Financial insecurity destroys lives. Slashing disability benefits isn’t reform—it’s cruelty disguised as cost-saving.
How Inequality Fuels the Cosmetic Surgery Boom
Rising inequality drives a global surge in cosmetic procedures.
The most wonderful time of the year
The splurge of Christmas consumerism, especially in Britain, Kate Pickett writes, is partly driven by status anxiety.
Here we go again …
The cost-of-living crisis, Kate Pickett writes, follows a familiar path of hugely unequal burdens.
The paradox of inequality
Kate Pickett explains how to turn the vicious circle of inequality and social mistrust into a virtuous one.
Class in the classroom
Nominally egalitarian education systems, Kate Pickett writes, can in reality reproduce deep social inequalities.
The story versus the statistic
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
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
‘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 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 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 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
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, […]