In this book, I have set out to explain why rising inequality has become a more or less permanent feature of life in most of the rich, industrialized democracies of Europe in the last thirty years. This has occurred despite public opinion in European societies that is staunchly opposed to inequality and supportive of state efforts to create more equitable societies (Osberg and Smeeding 2006; Kenworthy and McCall 2008; Kohut 2013; Sorapop and Norton 2014), and despite a growing consensus among experts that current levels of inequality are undesirable and even dangerous. My approach has been to study the politics and policy-making surrounding health inequalities, which most public health experts believe are closely linked to socioeconomic inequalities, but which policy-makers have tended to try to solve using different kinds of tools from those designed to impact directly the distribution of income and wealth.