Regimes of Inequality

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).

'This book provides a much-needed critical assessment of widespread, but largely unsuccessful, efforts to tackle health inequalities. It should cause those involved in developing policy responses to health inequalities, as well as those trying to influence these responses, to reflect on what they are proposing and why. As Lynch concludes, the policy levers for tackling inequality are clear; the question is whether policymakers are bold enough to use them.' Katherine Smith, University of Strathclyde

• 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.