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Changing the narrative on wealth inequality

Changing the narrative on wealth inequality

Public perceptions of and attitudes towards wealth, the wealthy and wealth inequality are complex. Understanding what they are, and how they can be shifted by different ways of communicating is a democratic imperative.

"Escalating wealth inequality is causing social and environmental harm. Although it is high and rising, public concern isn't keeping pace. Changing how wealth inequality is talked about could help to raise public concern and build political pressure to act."

Sarah Kerr and Michael Vaughan in Changing the Narrative on Wealth Inequality, 2024

This project arose out of a conversation with our project partner and funder, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), who were interested in understanding the effect of narratives on people’s perceptions and attitudes towards wealth inequality. Our previous work on political discourse and inequality (like this article by Savage & Vaughan Durability in Inequality Discourse in the UK Public Sphere, Vaughan & Kerr's Visual representations of wealth inequality in political communication and Kerr’s (2024) Wealth, Poverty and Inequality: Let’s Talk Wealtherty and Oppel’s (2023) Communication matters: Sensitivity in fairness evaluations across wealth inequality expressions and levels) allowed us to co-design a multi-stage project in dialogue with JRF, with a focus on outputs that social change actors could use in their work. 

Research focus and aims 

This multi-stage project began in 2023 with a literature review on The effects of the Framing of Wealth Inequality: A Literature Review. We then wrote Changing the Narrative on Wealth Inequality following a series of social change sector workshops to explore what experts in campaigning, advocacy, media and the arts felt were the most pressing issues that needed addressing in communicating with the public about wealth. These two pieces of work helped us design focus groups to find out what the UK public thinks about wealth and wealth inequality, which we ran in Autumn 2024 with support from New Economy Organisers’ Network, Future Narratives Lab, and Fairness Foundation. The results from these focus groups and a subsequent survey experiment which tested the effects of different frames on public opinion are published by JRF in Talking about wealth inequality: how to increase critical orientations and support for redistribution. 

Team

Dr Sarah Kerr, Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute 

Dr Michael Vaughan, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 
International Inequalities Institute 

Dr Annalena Oppel, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, International Inequalities Institute

Professor Mike Savage, Professorial Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute

Publications

The effects of the Framing of Wealth Inequality: A Literature Review. (Kerr & Vaughan 2024)

Changing the Narrative on Wealth Inequality (Kerr & Vaughan 2024)

Talking about wealth inequality: how to increase critical orientations and support for redistribution (forthcoming) (Kerr, Vaughan and Oppel, 2025)

Vaughan, M., & Kerr, S. (2024). Visual representations of wealth inequality in political communication. Visual Communication, 14703572241300886.

News

Talking about wealth inequality: how to increase critical orientations and support for redistribution 
9 June 2025

A new report with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation looking at perceptions of, and attitudes towards, wealth and wealth inequality — and how to increase public support for a fairer distribution. 

Grants

JRF award for Radical Imaginings workshops (Kerr)

LSE KEI Award for Talking about Wealth Inequality report (Savage, Vaughan and Kerr)

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