Five years after The Spirit Level, its
authors argue that research backs up their views on the iniquity of inequality
A lot has happened in the five years
since we published our book, The Spirit
Level. New Labour were still perhaps too relaxed about people
becoming "filthy rich". And there was an assumption that inequality
mattered only if it increased poverty, and that for most people
"real" poverty was a thing of the past.
But so much has changed. In the
aftermath of the financial crash and the emergence of Occupy,
there has been a resurgence of interest in inequality. Around 80% of Britons
now think the income gap is too large, and the message has been taken up by
world leaders. According to Barack Obama, income inequality is the
"defining challenge of our times", while Pope Francis states that
"inequality is the roots of social ills".
In the past five years, we've given
over 700 seminars and conference lectures. We've talked to academics, religious
groups, thinktanks of both right and left, and to international agencies such
as the UN, WHO, OECD, EU and ILO. The
truth is that human beings have the tendency to equate outward wealth with
inner.worth.. Iinequality colours our social perceptions. It invokes
feelings of superiority and inferiority, dominance and subordination
– which affect the way we relate to and treat each other.
As we looked at the data, it became
clear that almost all the problems that are more common at the bottom of the
social ladder are more common in more unequal societies – including mental
illness, drug addiction, obesity, loss of community life, imprisonment, unequal
opportunities and poorer wellbeing for children. The effects of inequality are
not confined to the poor. The health and social problems we looked at are
between twice and 10 times as common in more unequal societies. Inequality affects a large proportion of the
population. Research confirming both the
basic pattern and the social mechanisms has mushroomed. It's not just rich
countries where greater equality is
beneficial, it is also important in poorer countries. Even the more equal
provinces of China do better than the less equal ones.
Almost absent were studies
explicitly linking income inequality to psychological states. But new studies
have now filled that gap. That inequality damages family life is shown by higher rates
of child abuse, and increased status competition is likely to
explain the higher rates of bullying confirmed in schools in more unequal countries.
Strengthening community life is hampered by the difficulty
of breaking the ice between people, but greater inequality amplifies the
impression that some people are worth so much more than others, making us all
more anxious about how we are seen and judged. Research has shown that greater
inequality leads to shorter spells of economic expansion and more frequent and
severe boom-and-bust cycles that make economies more vulnerable to crisis. The
International Monetary Fund suggests that reducing inequality and bolstering
longer-term economic growth may be "two sides of the same coin". And
development experts point out how inequality compromises poverty reduction. Lastly, inequality is being taken up as an
important environmental issue; because it drives status competition, it
intensifies consumerism and adds to personal debt.
In Britain, the coalition government
has failed to reverse the continuing tendency for the richest 1% to get richer
faster than the rest of society. The Equality Trust calculates that the richest 100 people in
Britain now have as much wealth as the poorest 30% of households. It is hard to
think of a more powerful way of telling people at the bottom that they are
almost worthless than to pay them one-third of one percent of what the CEO in
the same company gets. Politicians must recognise that reducing inequality is
about improving the psychosocial wellbeing of the whole society. [Abridged]
© 2014 Guardian News and Media
Richard
G Wilkinson is a British researcher in social
inequalities in health and the social determinants of health. He is emeritus
professor of public health at the University of Nottingham and co-author, with Kate Pickett, of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal
Societies Almost Always Do Better
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/09/society-unequal-the-spirit-level
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