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The workshop covered three key questions about wealth inequality: what is already known, what policy-makers should be doing. Speakers and panel members included policy-makers, journalists, politicians, think tanks and academics working in the area of wealth inequality. 

Ed Miliband, who presented the Closing Keynote, spoke about his experience of tackling wealth inequality on the ground, including his own view of Labour’s Mansion Tax proposal.

The workshop was organised by Ben Ansell, who is also Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and the team working on the European Research Council Horizon 2020 funded WEALTHPOL project. 

One of the workshop’s key aims was to pinpoint ways we can tackle the problem of wealth inequality. As Ben commented:

“By bringing together academics, journalists, policymakers and policy experts together to discuss this ever-more important - but often misunderstood – issue, the day was hugely helpful in painting a ‘state of the art’ picture of what we currently know about wealth inequality in the UK. While there was consensus that wealth inequality was rising, participants also noted that there is a lack of political agreement on what types of policies might be effective and the political unpopularity of many existing measures such as inheritance taxation.

“We hope to use this event as a launchpad to provide new answers. As our ERC project moves forward, the WEALTHPOL team will bring together a wide range of data to grapple with these questions.”

The workshop took place at the Nuffield Foundation in London, with thanks to the Foundation for hosting the day.

For more information about the WEALTHPOL project, see wealthpol.web.ox.ac.uk. The report of the day’s proceedings is now available to be downloaded.