This paper proposes a method to optimize the performance of tandem source–channel coding with respect to the mean-squared error by exploiting the unequal error protection coding. More specifically, we formulate a combination of linear programming and grid search to optimize degree distributions for unequal error protected rateless channel codes. An asymptotic upper bound for the mean-squared error of the cascaded system is also derived. By optimizing the corresponding degree distributions of the rateless codes using unequal error protection principles, the proposed scheme has shown promising performance at high resolution region of source coding.