IAS Book Launch: Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality

Current debates on inequality tend to focus either on billionaires and their capacity to shape society or on the very poorest, and for good reason. This book puts the spotlight instead on a larger segment of the well-off, the top 10%. This group encompasses the bulk of the professionals and managers at the helm of the institutions that shape society and is, interestingly enough, both ubiquitous and near invisible. 

Earning around £60,000 per year qualifies you for the top 10%. However, we find that most of its members do not feel particularly wealthy or secure, fear downward mobility, and rarely have a sense of where they sit in the income distribution. Most of them are much closer to the median earner (on £30,000) than to the 1% (£180,000), yet in surveys and interviews we find that this group is particularly receptive to meritocratic discourse and a majority are opposed to higher taxation and welfare. 

In their book Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell argue that, as they struggle to maintain the standard of living that they have enjoyed for their children and as they face manifold crises (from global warming to mental health epidemics), they will either seek to further isolate themselves from the rest or reach out, in the understanding that their worries are not that different to those of the median earner. They want to make the case for the latter.

Respondents will be Stewart Lansley (Bristol) and Siobhan Morris (UCL).