As part of the ESRC’s 2021 Festival of Social Science programme, this discussion event focused on Stewart Lansley's new book ‘The Richer, The Poorer, How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor, A 200-Year History’.

For the last 200 years, Britain has been marked by a high inequality, high poverty cycle. That cycle has only been broken once and briefly, in the immediate post-war years. Unlike the boom and bust cycle which lasts between 10 and 20 years, Britain's first poverty/inequality wave lasted for a century and a half. Its second wave, which emerged from the early 1980s, has already lasted four decades and shows no sign of abating.

In this online discussion event, Stewart Lansley (Visiting Fellow in the School of Policy Studies) and Jane Millar (Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath) discussed the findings of Stewart's new book and reflected on the roots of this prolonged cycle, its impact on wider society and ordinary life chances, and what can be done to break it. The event was chaired by BPI Director and Professor of Social Justice, David Gordon.

Video recording available to view below