This year’s lecture will be delivered by Torsten Bell, Chief Executive Officer of the Resolution Foundation.

4:30pm GMT, 11:30am ET, 08:30am PT

About the lecture

Torsten will focus on the immediate cost of living crisis, and the background for the country experiencing it: a living standards stagnation stretching back well over a decade. He will reflect on the role social science has played in recognising, understanding and solving these related but distinct developments.

Rising living standards, something taken for granted for generations, feel like a distant memory in the UK. Surging energy prices, the highest inflation in four decades and falling real wages mean we are on course to end this parliament poorer than we began it in 2019. Much as no-one expected it, living standards wise the middle of the pandemic may turn out to be as good as things got. Many will go cold this winter, others will struggle with surging food prices and almost everyone will feel squeezed. The Bank of England expects unemployment to rise.

But the country facing these challenges has a history. Weak productivity growth saw workers enter the pandemic with wages no higher than they were in the financial crisis a decade before. The stagnation of the 2010s proves a toxic combination with the inequality of the 1980s, leaving low and middle income Britain far poorer than their counterparts in other advanced economies. Recognising this history is crucial to understanding what makes today’s struggles quite so acute.

Alongside documenting these trends, Torsten will offer his personal reflections on the role social science – and economics in particular – have played in helping policy makers, and the public, understand and respond to these forces shaping 21st Century Britain.

Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, will deliver a response to Torsten's lecture.

The lecture will be a useful and timely addition to the public debate on this important topic and it will once again showcase the value of social science.

About Torsten Bell

Torsten is the Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank that combines analytical rigour with policy prescriptions to improve the living standards of those in Britain on low to middle incomes. He has a background in economic policy, and his research focuses on economic change, inequality, the labour market, tax and benefits, and wealth. Prior to leading the Resolution Foundation, Torsten was Director of Policy for the Labour Party. He has also worked in HM Treasury, as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the financial crisis and as a civil servant. Torsten is a trustee of the Child Poverty Action Group and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

About Linda Yueh

Linda is an economist, writer and broadcaster. She is a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School. She is also Visiting Professor at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Linda is Adviser to the UK Board of Trade. She is a Fellow (FRSA) of the Royal Society of Arts. Linda is a TV and radio presenter, including for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, as well as having fronted BBC TV series, such as The New Middle Class, Next Billionaires, and Working Lives. She was Chief Business Correspondent for BBC News and presenter of Talking Business with Linda Yueh for BBC World TV and BBC News Channel. She has also been Economics Editor and anchor at Bloomberg TV.