Richard Gerald Wilkinson (born 1943) is a British social epidemiologist, author, advocate, and left-wing political activist.

He is best known for his book with Kate Pickett The Spirit Level, first published in 2009, which argues that societies with more equal distribution of incomes have better health, fewer social problems such as violence, drug abuse, teenage births, mental illness, obesity, and others, and are more cohesive than ones in which the gap between the rich and poor is greater.

[2] His University of Nottingham Masters of Medical Science thesis was "Socio-economic Factors in Mortality Differentials" (1976).

[7] In August 2015, Wilkinson endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.

[8] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the authors of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, are a couple.