Book Review: Peak Inequality

Inequality in Britain is the topic of Danny Dorling’s latest book Peak Inequality, Britain’s Ticking Time Bomb. The last decades have seen the effects of Thatcher’s policies, Tony Blair’s politics and the Brexit referendum.

All these have had an effect on inequality, explains Dorling. Politics, housing, education and health are only a few examples of fields in which inequality happens. Income seems to have reached the highest difference in inequality of the last 50 years, while house prices can’t go up anymore or no one will be able to afford them.

NHS, adds Dorling, is another problem regarding inequality. The NHS is in crisis, while, according to the ONS report released on the 18th of June, 2018, deaths have risen by 5% across England.

Prisons, moreover, are more and more overcrowded. Peak Inequality, therefore, tries to predict what the future holds while trying to imagine a desirable outcome.

The book’s sixty chapters are designed to stand alone, as well as working together, and include Dorling’s articles for the press.

Dorling is a professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford. He recently held a lesson on his book at the London School of Economics.