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Inequality and How to Eliminate Structural Barriers for Achieving Equality
Online Event
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Richard Wilkinson will show that societies with more considerable income differences between rich and poor suffer from higher rates of a wide range of health and social problems, including poorer life expectancy, worse mental health, more violence, higher imprisonment rates, and drug abuse and lower levels of trust. Societies that do well on one of these measures tend to do well on all of them, and those who do poorly tend to do badly on all of them.
Wilkinson will outline the social and psychological processes that lie behind these patterns. He will show that inequality makes social status and class differentiation more powerful, with damaging consequences for social relations, mental health and the prospects of achieving sustainable economic systems.
Speakers
Richard Wilkinson
Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology
University of Nottingham Medical School
Before training in epidemiology, Richard Wilkinson studied economic history and philosophy of science at the London School of Economics. He is now professor emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, an honorary professor at University College London and visiting professor at the University of York.
Since his initial research focused on health inequalities, his books and research papers have drawn attention to the tendency for societies with more significant income differences between rich and poor to suffer a heavier burden of health and social problems. Two of his books have been the subject of documentary films – The Great Leveller (for the Channel 4 TV's Equinox series broadcast in 1996) was based on his Unhealthy Societies. The Divide (based on The Spirit Level) was released in April 2016 (available on Netflix). The Spirit Level, written with Kate Pickett, is now available in 24 languages. It won the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize.
His first TED talk, "How economic inequality harms societies," has been watched over 4 million times, and his second, "The link between inequality and anxiety," was viewed over ¾million times in the first two weeks of its release on 21/9/21.
Richard has received Solidar's Silver Rose Award, the Irish Cancer Society's Charles Cully Memorial medal, and was The Australian Society for Medical Research medallist in 2017. He and Kate Pickett published their latest book, called The Inner Level, in 2018.