I N RECENT YEARS America has witnessed a troubling trend: a rise in what have become known as “deaths of despair”. Sir Angus Deaton and Anne Case, an academic couple both of Princeton University, have tracked an increase in the number of middle-aged whites dying from drug overdoses, suicides and alcohol-related conditions. A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a British think-tank, published on May 14th, suggests that something similar is taking place on the other side of the Atlantic.

This is one initial finding of a five-year review of inequality begun by the IFS , which will look at everything from income to political participation. In its scale and scope, the exercise will be on a par with the Mirrlees Review, a gargantuan assessment of the tax system undertaken by the same think-tank, which issued its final report in 2011. Sir Angus, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2015, is overseeing the new project. Its first report points out that Britain has one of the highest levels of income inequality among big, rich countries. Sir Angus worries that the British economy is “enriching the few at the expense of the many”, which in turn “is making a mockery of democracy”.