Looking back at 2024 so far

As we head into the summer break, we look back at what we've written about so far this year. We’ll be taking a break in August - see you in September.

JULY

Inequality lessons from the Covid inquiry As the Covid inquiry publishes it first report, we highlight how inequalities rob a nation of its resilience and its capacity to cope with future shocks

Mission deep Highlights and key themes from last week's launch webinar for our new report, 'Deepening the Opportunity Mission'

Deepening the Opportunity Mission Our new report on why tackling inequality is key to the success of Labour’s opportunity mission, and how to make it happen

The morning before the next five years Labour's honeymoon period won't last long, and there's urgent work to be done to build a fairer country if they are to avoid losing public support

The Canaries How unfair inequality is poisoning Britain

JUNE

Electoral appeals to fairness A brief analysis of how politicians and political parties have used (and abused) the idea of fairness during the election campaign so far

Three quick actions Please complete or share our survey on mobilising business voices against inequality, sign up for the launch webinar for our 'Canaries' report on 1 July, and let us know if you have spare office space

Rethinking the roots of poverty A guest post from Barry Knight, co-chair of Compass

Wealth creators vs wealth extractors Keir Starmer talks of wealth creation as his number one mission, but risks missing an opportunity to differentiate between productive and extractive wealth

MAY

Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places Join the renowned development economist Paul Collier and an expert panel on 24 June at Bush House to hear about his new book on inequality and place

Tracking narrative ebbs and flows on wealth inequality The Sunday Times Rich List was putting forward one view on wealth last week, but an increasingly broad group of voices are making the opposite case

Reasons to be optopian Why we can be cautiously optimistic about taking action on wealth inequality over the next five years

Telling different stories about wealth A new report by LSE for JRF, which reviews the literature on the framing of economic inequality, suggests that the lack of shared public understanding of wealth inequality might present an opportunity

APRIL

New ideas for a fairer Britain Three perspectives - on remaking Britain, rethinking the work ethic, and putting tackling inequality at the heart of mission-driven government

Rotten Luck How and why we underplay the role of luck in life, and what to do about it

Finding a consensus on wealth inequality Ten years after the publication of Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century', what is the status of the debate about wealth inequality in the UK?

Cap wealth, for society's health? A summary of the arguments from our webinar on 28 March featuring Ingrid Robeyns, author of 'Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth'

MARCH

Is it fair to remove the two-child limit? A philosopher weighs up the moral arguments for and against scrapping the benefit cap

A fair life’s work Why the UK needs a new social contract... A guest post from Catherine Foot, Director of Phoenix Insights

A remedy for the poisoned chalice Whichever party forms the next government is going to have its work cut out repairing our public services; a timely new book points to the crucial role of tax reform in making this possible

A spotter's guide to possible tax reforms in the 2024 spring budget Some are more likely to appear than others! With notes on revenue impacts, fairness, political status and public support

FEBRUARY

Minority Sport How politicians and the media overestimate public support for tax cuts and tax reliefs

The politics of welfare in an election year A guest post from Ben Baumberg Geiger, co-lead of the programme on work, welfare reform and mental health at the ESRC Centre for Society & Mental Health at King's College London

Deep Opportunity To give everyone in Britain a genuine opportunity to thrive, we need to remove structural barriers to opportunity (e.g. poverty) by tackling the root causes of those barriers (e.g. wealth inequality)

Unequal Kingdom Our new polling on public attitudes to inequalities and their impacts shows that concern extends beyond regional inequalities but awareness of impacts is limited

JANUARY

Scarcely able to think straight Scarcity - poverty - is an assault on the brain. And almost three in ten children in Britain live in poverty; it's hard to think of a more flagrant example of unfairness

Tax Britannica The debate about cutting taxes misunderstands the public mood - people want investment in public services, not tax cuts

Can we mend our times before the End Times? A summary of the arguments from our webinar last week featuring Peter Turchin, author of 'End Times: Elites, counter-elites and the path of political disintegration'

Updating the Fairness Index The latest version of our online tool incorporates new data and some new indicators on wellbeing from the Office for National Statistics