Social Democracy and the Problem of Equality: Economic Analysis and Political Argument in the United Kingdom

In the context of the recent spread of public and academic concern with economic inequality, this paper examines the evolution of British social democratic thinking about inequality, linking this evolution to the changing debates within economics on this issue. The discussion of the economics of inequality focusses upon the pivotal figure of Tony Atkinson, the most important British economic theorist of inequality, but also an important figure in policy debate since the 1970s.