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Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice

This research programme is led by Professor Mike Savage.

Economic concerns with inequality have tended to focus on the nature and extent of income inequality, which is now well known to be growing in many nations since the 1980s. However, income inequality is only the tip of the iceberg. Following the influential arguments of Thomas Piketty, which rework Marx’s emphasis on capital accumulation, it is increasingly realised that wealth is a more fundamental driver of inequality dynamics. Whereas analyses of the distribution of income inequality are often pitched as reflections of the significance of skill and human capital for affecting income differences, focusing on wealth opens up bigger concerns about the processes driving wealth accumulation, inheritance and privilege. The build-up of wealth can frequently be seen as ‘unearned income’ linked to the proliferation of rent extraction processes and asset markets, which thus threatens liberal and meritocratic values. Yet, although wealth is critical to the analysis of economic inequality, it is more difficult to theorise and measure than income. Wealth assets take numerous forms and can be concealed. Wealth is also highly mobile and cannot so easily be associated with national formations as income inequality.

In emphasising the fundamental ways in which wealth inequality affects societies, our interests are necessarily wide ranging, but we focus our work through dedicated programmes of study in specific areas.

Highlights

  • Global Wealth Monitor
    This new project combines wealth distributions for all countries over time into a global distribution, to enable cross-country comparisons and track trends in global wealth inequality.
  • Too much finance conference
    An international research and policy conference examining how oversized financial sectors undermine economic performance and fuel inequality.
  • Why the UK racial wealth divide matters report
    A report published in collaboration with the Runnymede Trust exploring how historic structural wealth barriers are hindering people of colour today.