In a recent edition of the Financial Times, chief economics commentator Martin Wolf selected Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next as one of the best economics books of Summer 2026. The book is authored by Prof Paul Johnson, Visiting Professor at UCL Economics and current Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford and co-authored by leading economists including Professor Richard Blundell, David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL.
The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level.
The book is available to purchase from Princeton University Press.
The book comes to five important conclusions on “addressing inequalities”: first, inequality of opportunity is inextricably connected to inequality of outcome; second, redistribution matters, but so does “the status and dignity” that come from shaping one’s own destiny; third, policies on trade, immigration or climate must take the impact on inequality into account; fourth, apparently “fair” market processes can have deleterious consequences for inequality; and, finally, growth still matters.
