Inequality is a socio-cultural order which reduces our capabilities to function as human beings, our health, our dignity, our sense of self, as well as our resources to act and participate in the world— argues Göran Therborn (University of Cambridge) in his new great, and shocking, book The Killing Fields of Inequality.
The book shows that inequality is literally a killing field, with millions of people dying premature deaths because of it. Therborn elaborates how devastating are the three types of inequality (vital, existential and resource) and their mechanisms of reproduction (distanciation, exclusion and exploitation). The lethal effects of inequality operate not only in the poor world, but also, and increasingly, in rich countries like the US, UK, Finland. Even when they survive inequality, millions of human lives are stunted by the humiliations and degradations of inequality linked to gender, race and ethnicity, and class.
Therborn presents the reader in an accessible and interesting format with a series of unsettling, and surprising, statistics that pull into perspective how other forms of inequality have a detrimental effect on individuals’ lives. Inequality of opportunity in the US, as but one example, means that the life expectancy of white American men without a college degree fell by three years; the life expectancy of women in the same group fell by more than five years. African Americans with less than twelve years of education when compared to white Americans with more than sixteen years of education, experience a difference in life expectancy by up to twelve years.
This very importnant and timely book ends with a perceptive discussion of the next steps towards a more egalitarian future.

Open access to PP presentation by the author based on the book.