Sir Douglas Robb lectures 2014 - The Human Cost of Inequality

Hear UK Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Good for Everyone (London: Penguin, 2010), discuss the issues around social inequality in this three lecture series. Their controversial and award-winning book has given rise to international debate, presenting the argument that: “In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population.”

Their research is especially relevant to New Zealand. It suggests that our claim to be a country with relatively little inequality is unfounded, and that our incidence of health and social problems may be closely related to this fact. This is a great topic to be debating in an election year.

Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research on the social determinants of health and on the societal effects of income inequality. He is Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London and a Visiting Professor at the University of York. Kate Pickett is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. She studied physical anthropology at Cambridge, nutritional sciences at Cornell, and epidemiology at Berkeley before spending four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago.

Her work, with Richard Wilkinson, on "The Spirit Level" was shortlisted for Research Project of the Year 2009 by the Times Higher Education Supplement, and their book was chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman.

Lecture One - Evidence of damage. Monday May 19 at 7.30pm
Lecture Two - The causal processes. Wednesday May 21 at 7.30pm. Lecture Three - The solutions. Friday May 23 at 7.30pm.

Debate inequality issues with these learned professors.