Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the authors of The Spirit Level – Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better – argue that almost every social problem common in developed societies – reduced life expectancy, child mortality, drugs, crime, homicide rates, mental illness and obesity – has a single root cause: inequality.
The authors’ view is that it’s not absolute levels of poverty that create the social problems, but the differentials in income between rich and poor. Their findings suggest that just as someone from the lowest-earning 20% of a more equal society is more likely to live longer than their counterpart from a less equal society, so too someone from the highest-earning 20% has a longer life expectancy than their alter ego in a less equal society.
The piece in today’s Guardian about the book article highlights some random headline statistics from it:
- The US is wealthier and spends more on health care than any other country, yet a baby born in Greece, where average income levels are about half that of the US, has a lower risk of infant mortality and longer life expectancy than an American baby.
- Obesity is twice as common in the UK as the more equal societies of Sweden and Norway, and six times more common in the US than in Japan.
- Teenage birth rates are six times higher in the UK than in more equal societies;
- mental illness is three times as common in the US as in Japan;
- murder rates are three times higher in more unequal countries.
Some of these statistics would probably warrant further investigation. When it comes to obesity is it inequality or differences in diet that matter most? Is mental illness more likely to be identified in the US than in Japan?
The authors argue that that countries such as the US, the UK and Portugal, where the top 20% earn seven, eight or nine times more than the lowest 20%, scored noticeably higher on all social problems at every level of society than in countries such as Sweden and Japan, where the differential is only two or three times higher at the top. There are links here to Polly Toynbee’s book last year suggesting that the UK remains a country marked by inequalities. And the recent furore over Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension, suggests this is an issue people care about. There’s more information on the Equality Trust website.
Town Hall Matters 