Richard Wilkinson/Kate Pickett: The Spirit Level

[Note: checked this book out from library, but didn't find time to go through it. Should try again later.]

Foreward [by Robert B. Reich]

Preface

Part One: Material Success, Social Failure

1. The end of an era

2. Poverty or inequality?

3. How inequality gets under the skin

Part Two: The Costs of Inequality

4. Community life and social relations

5. Mental health and drug use

6. Physical health and life expectancy

7. Obesity: wider income gaps, wider waists

8. Educational performance

9. Teenage births: recycling deprivation

10. Violence: gaining respect

11. Imprisonment and punishment

12. Social mobility: unequal opportunities

Part Three: A Better Society

13. Dysfunctional societies

14. Our social inheritance

15. Equality and sustainability

16. Building the future

Lynsey Hanley: The way we live now: Book review of the UK edition, published in March 2009 by Allen Lane. A US edition is scheduled from Bloomsbury Press in December 2009. Wilkinson previously wrote The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (paperback, 2006, New Press). He is a public health researcher over 30 years. Some quotes from Hanley's review:

We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens' incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks' holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we'd trust each other more. [ . . . ]

The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet's resources.

The book contains numerous graphs based on various measures across most economically advanced nations:

On almost every index of quality of life, or wellness, or deprivation, there is a gradient showing a strong correlation between a country's level of economic inequality and its social outcomes. Almost always, Japan and the Scandinavian countries are at the favourable "low" end, and almost always, the UK, the US and Portugal are at the unfavourable "high" end, with Canada, Australasia and continental European countries in between.

This has nothing to do with total wealth or even the average per-capita income. America is one of the world's richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence -- murder, in particular -- that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality -- within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging.

The graphs also reveal that it is not just the poor, but whole societies, from top to bottom, that are adversely affected by inequality.

Finally:

There is a growing inventory of serious, compellingly argued books detailing the social destruction wrought by inequality. Wilkinson and Pickett have produced a companion to recent bestsellers such as Oliver James's Affluenza and Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety. But The Spirit Level also contributes to a longer view, sitting alongside Richard Sennett's 2003 book Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality, and the epidemiologist Michael Marmot's Status Syndrome, from 2005.

Anyone who believes that society is the result of what we do, rather than who we are, should read these books; they should start with The Spirit Level because of its inarguable battery of evidence, and because its conclusion is simple: we do better when we're equal.

The most intriguing thing here is the question of growth limits. Economic growth tend to provide at least some trickle down, so as long as an economy is growing (beyond population) it's possible for all people -- actually, more/less probable for most depending on how extreme inequality is -- to feel at least some sense of progress. However, when growth stops, progress becomes a zero-sum game, which greatly increases the stress on those who lose out. There are many scenarios likely to reduce growth in the future, including widespread sense that we'd prefer more leisure even at the expense of more goods. When that happens it becomes all the more important to move toward a more equitable society. That is what makes these books so important.

posted 2009-08-18