Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Commissioner

Distribution of Wealth Policy Commission

About

ruth-listerRuth Lister has been Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University since October 2010, having joined the University in 1994. She was Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bradford. She is a former director of the Child Poverty Action Group and is now its honorary president. In 1999, Ruth was awarded the CBE, and was appointed as a member of the House of Lords in 2010 as Baroness Lister of Burtersett.

Professor Lister has published widely on poverty and social exclusion, welfare state reform, gender and citizenship. She served on the Commission on Social Justice, the Opsahl Commission into the Future of Northern Ireland, the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, the Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty and the National Equality Panel. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and received a life-time achievement award from the Social Policy Association in 2010.

Personal Perspective on the Commission

 “I joined the Wealth Commission because I believe it's time a spotlight was focused on wealth as opposed to income inequality. I'm particularly interested in the possible social and political effects of wide inequalities in wealth: are they damaging to social cohesion, citizenship and democracy? I also hope we might be able to tease out the gender dimension of wealth inequality. And I believe the Commission provides an opportunity to scrutinise in details the options for the taxation of wealth.”