Tackling Inequality

by Richard Layard

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists, whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential articles on education, equality and income distribution and on the lessons of economic transition in Eastern Europe. It is published along with a companion volume. Inequality argues that lifetime inequality is the basic inequality we should worry about. In this context education is a powerful instrument of redistribution, as well as a national investment. Cash redistribution has efficiency costs which can be calculated, but it may also serve to discourage inefficient over-work arising from each person's efforts to earn more than his neighbour. A final series of essays is based on Layard's recent work on reform strategies in Russia and Poland. The book opens with Richard Layard's personal credo 'Why I became an economist'.

542 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Peter Richard Grenville Layard, Baron Layard FBA, is a British labour economist, currently working as programme director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

His early career focused on how to reduce unemployment and inequality. He was Senior Research Officer for the famous Robbins Committee on Higher Education. This committee's report led to the massive expansion of UK university education in the 1960s and 1970s.

Following research on happiness begun in the 1970s by economists such as Richard Easterlin at the University of Southern California, he has written about the economics of happiness, with one theme being the importance of non-income variables on aggregate happiness, including mental health.

His main current interest is how better mental health could improve our social and economic life. His work on mental health, including publishing The Depression Report in 2006, led to the establishment of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme in England. He is co-editor of the World Happiness Report, with John F. Helliwell and Jeffrey Sachs.