Income inequality in Britain has grown substantially in recent decades.
As society as a whole has got richer, those at the very top have done markedly better than everyone else. As a result, there is a growing gap that some have argued is detrimental to society as a whole. Recent book The Spirit Level has been central to this argument. Its authors put forward evidence of correlations of life expectancies, crime rates and infant mortality with the Gini coefficient, a measurement of inequality.
But if living standards across the board are rising, should we be concerned that some people are vastly better off than others? And where does the current government's focus on social mobility fit in?
To debate this we have in the studio:
Polly Toynbee - Guardian columnist and author of Unjust Rewards: Exposing Greed and Inequality in Britain Today.
Max Wind-Cowie - head of the Progressive Conservatism Project at think tank Demos and author of Everyday equality.
Danny Dorling - Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield and author of So You Think You Know About Britain?.
Peter Saunders - social research consultant and author of Beware False Prophets: Equality, the Good Society and The Spirit Level.
Leave your thoughts below.
