Overview
This research programme, a partnership between INET and the University’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention, seeks to understand the drivers and implications of economic inequality across rich countries and what is required to produce better, fairer growth and opportunity. The programme was initially established with support from the Resolution Foundation from 2014-18, with a particular focus on how working-age households around and below the middle of the distribution were faring and how this could be improved. The Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity supported by Citi from 2016-21 continued to probe the sources and implications of economic inequality, how inequality affects economic growth and living standards as well as intergenerational mobility and opportunity, the political consequences of inequality, and policy responses. The programme is currently funded primarily through a 6-year Synergy Grant from the European Research Council for Towards Distributional National Accounts, with Brian Nolan leading the Oxford team in a collaboration with Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics) and Emmanuel Saez (University of California-Berkeley).