The Inner Level

How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone's Well-being

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Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level, now published in more than twenty languages, has been one of the most influential non-fiction books published in the last decade, showing conclusively how less equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across a whole range of social measures - health, education, levels of violence, life expectancy and child wellbeing - and initiating the enormous public attention now given to the impacts of inequality.

Based on an equally impressive range of data and analysis, The Inner Level now shows the impact inequality has on individuals: how it affects us psychologically, makes social relations more stressful, undermines self-confidence and distorts natural differences in personal abilities. It demonstrates that societies based on fundamental equalities, sharing and reciprocity produce much higher levels of wellbeing than those based on excessive individualism, competitiveness and social aggression. Like its predecessor, The Inner Level will transform ideas of how we should organise the way we live together.

The question of inequality is likely to play a bigger role in the next election than it has for more than a generation. It would be better for all of us if that debate was informed by robust statistical analysis rather than the emotive politics of envy. Any politician wishing to do so would be wise to read Wilkinson and Pickett's books.
Andrew Anthony, Observer

About Richard Wilkinson

Richard Wilkinson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and visiting professor at University College London and at the University of York. Trained in history, the philosophy of science and epidemiology, he has played a formative role in international research and is the author of several books on health and inequality. He is also the co-author, with Kate Pickett, of the international bestseller The Spirit Level, which was named one of Guardian’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, won the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Award and the 2011 Political Science Association’s Publication of the Year Award, was adapted into the 2015 documentary film The Divide, and has been translated into 24 languages. Its follow up, The Inner Level, was published in 2018.

Wilkinson is the founder of The Equality Trust and recipient of Solidar’s Silver Rose Award, the Irish Cancer Society’s Charles Cully Memorial Medal, and the Australian Society for Medical Research Medal. He was awarded a honorary doctorate by the University of Northumberland in 2025 and is a Fellow by Distinction of the UK Faculty of Public Health.

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About Kate Pickett

Kate Pickett is Professor for the Public Understanding of Social Science and Director of the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change at
University of York.

Her landmark book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, co-written with Richard Wilkinson, was an international bestseller, chosen by the Guardian as one of the 100 most influential books of the century and by the New Statesman as a top ten book of the decade. Their follow-up, The Inner Level, shows how societal inequality has similarly profound effects on individual health and wellbeing.

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Guardian, Nature and New York Times, and she has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches, including at the United Nations, the European Parliament and within UK government departments.

Kate is the co-founder of the Equality Trust, academic director of Health Equity North, and a fellow of the RSA, the UK Faculty of Public Health and the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2023, she received an OBE for services to societal equality.

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