The Equality Trust – Cost of Inequality 2023

Over the last few decades, the UK’s inequality has increased rapidly. We’re all familiar with the headlines – record profits and CEO pay, billionaire wealth spiralling out of control, luxury developments in our cities. In 2023, the UK’s 171 billionaires now hold as much wealth as over 40 million of the rest of us. The Equality Trust was created after the book The Spirit Level documented the ways in which more equal societies worked better. They’ve found that the benefits of becoming a more equal society would be enormous: longer healthy lives, better education systems, less crime, and happier communities. The UK’s inequality has left us more unhealthy, unhappy, and unsafe than our more equal peers. It’s also causing huge damage to our economy. Over-reliance on the financial systems that allow for massive profits and wealth hoarding has hollowed out our infrastructure, encouraged massive regional disparities, and left us vulnerable to shocks and recessions. Now they’ve found that there’s also a direct financial cost to inequality. As well as hurting our economy and communities, the UK is effectively spending huge amounts every year to subsidise the costs of inequality. Read more.