On October 21, RSF president Sheldon Danziger delivered the 2015 Bicknell Lecture, titled “Poverty, Public Policy and Public Health,” at the Boston University School of Public Health. Danziger, who is co-editor of the 2013 RSF book Legacies of the War on Poverty, has argued that since the early 1970s, economic gains in the U.S. have primarily benefited the elite, while wages for the average worker have remained stagnant.

“The conventional wisdom is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats. But it no longer works that way,” Danziger said in a new interview with BU Today. “The last 40 years have been a period of very slow wage growth and rising inequality.”

These growing disparities in income have led to disparities in health—which, in turn, exacerbate cycles of inequality. As Danziger noted, “Health disparities are tied to poverty rates. Those at the bottom have lower life expectancies, higher unemployment. And the causation goes both ways—people in poor health are less likely to work.”

Danziger’s Bicknell Lecture, which explored the connections between inequality and public health, was followed by a panel discussion with Charles E. Carter (Harvard), Molly Baldwin (Roca Inc.), and Perri Klass (NYU).

Click here to read Danziger’s interview with BU Today in full.