The Harms of Extreme Wealth: Launching the Evidence Review
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute
3 November 2026 at 6.30pm

How much wealth is too much? Should it be possible for trillionaires to exist? And what are the consequences for the rest of society?

Growing attention is being paid to the idea of an Extreme Wealth Line: a threshold beyond which the concentration of wealth may cause undue harm to democracy, the economy, society and the environment. While it is now widely accepted that extreme wealth concentration can have damaging effects, there is less agreement about the point at which those harms become significant enough to warrant intervention.

This event marks the launch of a new Evidence Review on the Harms of Extreme Wealth. Bringing together insights from the latest research, the review examines what research across political science, economics and sociology tells us about how extreme wealth causes harm, and whether the evidence identifies ‘tipping points’ that could inform the setting of an Extreme Wealth Line.

Speakers and chair: 

Tania Burchardt is Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) and a Professor in the Department of Social Policy at LSE.

Sunil Kapur has been a member of Patriotic Millionaires since January 2025. He has worked in the public and private sector as an Office Manager and Executive Assistant. Since 2008, Sunil has worked in Primary Schools across East London as a Teaching Assistant.

Catherine West is the Labour MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet, and has been an MP continually since 7 May 2015. A member of the Labour Party, Catherine served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Indo-Pacific from 2024 to 2025.

Francisco H G Ferreira is the Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies at LSE, where he is also Director of the International Inequalities Institute. His work on the measurement, causes, and consequences of inequality and poverty in developing countries has been published widely and awarded various prizes, including the Richard Stone Prize in Applied Econometrics and the Kendrick Prize from the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.

Find out how to attend in the LSE Events page.