Topic: Inequality

In the United States, racial/ethnic inequalities in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias persist even after controlling for socioeconomic factors and physical health. These persistent and unexplained disparities suggest: (1) there are unrecognized dementia risk factors that are socially patterned and/or (2) known dementia risk factors exhibit differential impact across social groups. Pursuing these research directions with data from multiple longitudinal studies of brain and cognitive aging has revealed several challenges to the study of late-life health inequalities, highlighted evidence

Richard Blundell examines inequalities in income, living standards, wealth, health, family circumstances, opportunities and political influence. He considers how weak living-standard growth after the financial crisis sharpened these divisions, and how the COVID-19 pandemic intensified some existing inequalities while exposing new ones. The lecture asks how to balance taxes and welfare benefits with minimum wages, human-capital investment and competition policy. It argues that the tax and benefit system alone cannot resolve low wages and earnings inequality. Blundell outlines the IFS–Deaton Re