Regimes of Inequality The Political Economy of Health and Wealth

Since the 1990s, mainstream political parties have failed to address the problem of growing inequality, resulting in political backlash and the transformation of European party systems. Most attempts to explain the rise of inequality in political science take a far too narrow approach, considering only economic inequality and failing to recognize how multiple manifestations of inequality combine to reinforce each other and the underlying political features of advanced welfare states. Combining training in public health with a background in political science, Julia Lynch brings a unique perspective to debates about inequality in political science and to public health thinking about the causes of and remedies for health inequalities. Based on case studies of efforts to reduce health inequalities in England, France and Finland, Lynch argues that inequality persists because political leaders chose to frame the issue of inequality in ways that made it harder to solve.

1. Explaining resilient inequalities in health and wealth; 2. Theorizing regimes of inequality: welfare, neoliberalism, and the reframing of a social problem; 3. Health inequalities: the emergence of an international consensus policy frame; 4. New Labour, the redistributive taboo, and reframing inequality in England after the Black Report; 5. Inequality, territory, austerity: health equity in France since the u-turn; 6. From risk factors to social determinants: how the changing social democratic welfare regime in Finland reframed health inequality; 7. In and out of the Overton Window: how talking about health inequality made the problem harder to solve; 8. Regimes of inequality; Appendix. Content analysis of government and commissioned health inequality reports.

Julia Lynch is a professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, an editor of Socio-Economic Review, and serves as an expert advisor to the World Health Organization. She is the author of Age in the Welfare State: The Origins of Social Spending on Pensioners, Workers, and Children (2006).