The Kahn--Saks inequality is a classical result on the number of linear extensions of finite posets. We give a new proof of this inequality for posets of width two using explicit injections of lattice paths. As a consequence we obtain a $q$-analogue, a multivariate generalization and an equality condition in this case. We also discuss the equality conditions of the Kahn--Saks inequality for general posets and prove several implications between conditions conjectured to be equivalent.