"If there is this big difference, with some people worth everything and other people worth nothing, where do you come?" So asks Richard Wilkinson in the trailer for the forthcoming documentary based on his influential book The Spirit Level. Wilkinson, an epidemiologist, spent his career examining health issues caused or worsened by poverty and i...
William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.
Writer Jimmy Guterman takes society's temperature and digs into the reasons we're all talking about inequality.
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is a book of our moment. It may be the most unlikely egghead highbrow bestseller since A Brief History of Time – and it’s a lot longer than Stephen Hawking’s slender guide. Piketty’s 577-...
Inequality is a complicated term. It can be applied to so many factors, for one thing. There's income inequality, asset inequality, gender inequality, social, class, political ... you name it, someone, somewhere likely feels (and is) hard done by. And, for all the focus that Thomas Piketty has gained for his analysis of a new, ever-diverging glo...
Explore these TEDTalks that discuss income inequality -- what causes it, the brutal effects, and how we might fight it.
Start with this talk from Richard Wilkinson, whose 2009 book The Spirit Level gathers decades of research to draw this conclusion: Societies with more income inequality suffer -- in utterly predictable ways -- more than soci...
It's safe to say that economic inequality bothers us. But why? Harvard philosopher T. M. Scanlon offers four reasons we should tackle -- and fix -- the problem.
The great inequality of income and wealth in the world, and within the United States, is deeply troubling. It seems, even to many of us who benefit from this inequality, that somethin...
What do a disease-fighting epidemiologist (retired) and an up-and-coming social psychologist have in common? They're both fascinated by the unseen social problems hidden behind the word "inequality." Beyond the lack of access to money and power -- what does inequality do to us as human beings?
Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson (TED Talk: ...
Rich and poor, left and right, we all agree the world should be more equal. Dan Ariely and Michael Norton have spent the past decade analyzing the data. Now, they tackle what to do next.
Picture three people splitting an 8-piece pizza. How should they divide it? The possibilities are endless, from the very unequitable -- one person eats the who...
Deepa Narayan is an international advisor on poverty, gender and development with more than 25 years of experience working at the World Bank, the UN and NGOs.
Anna Rosling-Rönnlund collects photographs of everyday objects from the richest to the poorest households. Even a toothbrush, she says, can reveal a world of inequalities.
Imagine if the world lived along a single street, with the richest households on one end, the poorest on the other -- and every door flung open to the public. That’s the visi...