Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Inequality: the antecedent and outcome of injustice -- 'Elitism is efficient': new educational divisions -- 'Exclusion is necessary': excluding people from society -- 'Prejudice is natural': a wider racism -- 'Greed is good': consumption and waste -- 'Despair is inevitable': health and well-being -- Conclusion, conspiracy, consensus.

Few would dispute that we live in an unequal and unjust world, but what causes this inequality to persist? Danny Dorling claims in this book that in rich countries social inequality is no longer caused by not having enough resources to share, but by unrecognised and unacknowledged beliefs which actually propagate it.