On Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, President Christina Paxson delivered the Cogut Center’s Invitational Lecture in the Humanities, “Health Inequality: Economics, Ethics and Public Policy.” Her talk examined why health outcomes differ markedly across socioeconomic groups within countries and across countries, reviewing evidence on the magnitude and drivers of health inequalities; considering questions about ethical and economic issues that underpin responses to health inequalities; and highlighting the value and potential pitfalls of possible policy responses. Former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs and the Hughes Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, Paxson has studies international economic problems of labor supply, mobility, savings, inequality, and aging, with a specific focus on the relationship of economic factors to health and welfare over the life course, particularly on the health and welfare of children. The Invitational Lecture in the Humanities is an annual event in which a prominent member of the Brown University faculty considers pressing issues in the humanities, issues of importance to scholarship and to the world at large.