SINCE we published The Spirit Level two years ago, we鈥檝e noticed a hunger for explanations of why rich societies seem to have so many social problems. The explanation we offer seems to link up with a widespread intuition that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive. The financial crash has also made people more willing to think critically about great inequality.
In a sense, our book is a theory of why so many health and social problems are more common at the bottom of society. People imagine that vulnerable people end up at the bottom of society and the resilient move up. They assume that鈥檚 why there is a social gradient. But no amount of sorting the population like that would make these problems so much more common in countries with bigger differences in income. We argue that they are a response to social status differentiation and social hierarchy itself.
To test this, we looked at several issues: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, obesity, education, imprisonment, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage births and child well-being. In every case we found that rates of problems were anything from twice to 10 times as high in countries with bigger income difference between rich and poor. We then double-checked by seeing if the more unequal of the 50 states of the US also did worse on all these health and social problems. The results were strikingly similar.
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Our figures come from the World Bank, the United Nations, the World 91色情片 Organization and the US Census Bureau. Most of the analyses have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and some relationships have been tested many times by different research groups using data from different societies.
鈥淢uch of the rise in inequality comes from the way top incomes have run away from the rest of us鈥�
One of the many interesting things to emerge is that it is not just the poor who are affected by how unequal a society is. The differences in outcomes between more and less equal societies are so great because almost everyone is affected. The poor benefit most from greater equality, but even the better-off seem to live longer and their children do better.
How is it that inequality has such powerful effects on us? First, it seems damaging to the quality of the social fabric. More unequal societies are less cohesive, more violent and more stressful. People trust each other less and community life is weaker. Inequality also drives social class differentiation and social hierarchy, amplifying concern with social position and increasing feelings of superiority and inferiority. We become increasingly neurotic about how we are seen and judged by others. Status competition and status insecurity increase. Much of it reflects our evolved sensitivity to social status and probably owes more to monkeys than Marx.
Societies have become more equal in many different ways. Some, such as Sweden, do it through redistributive taxes and benefits. Others, such as Japan or New Hampshire in the US, do well because they start off with smaller differences in pre-tax earnings and so have lower taxes and less generous benefits. It looks as if, as long as a society becomes more equal, either route is equally good.
Research published last year shows that even the American public may be averse to inequality. Taking a random sample of 5522 Americans, Michael Norton from Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, looked at their views on the distribution of wealth (rather than the distribution of income). Participants were shown three unlabelled pie charts: one with each 20 per cent of the population having the same wealth, one with the wealth distribution of the US, and one based on Sweden鈥檚 pattern. Some 92 per cent preferred the Swedish distribution, and the percentage varied only from 89 to 93 per cent depending on whether they were rich or poor, or voted Democrat or Republican.
When asked about the real distribution of wealth in the US, the average estimate was that the richest 20 per cent of Americans control 59 per cent of the wealth; in fact 20 per cent own closer to 84 per cent. As for the ideal distribution, people preferred the top 20 per cent to own 32 per cent of all wealth. This was fascinating proof that rich Americans are also alert to inequality.
Much of the rise in inequality in recent decades has come from the way top incomes have run away from the rest of us. A clue as to how to deal with that may come from more democratic companies: from mutuals, friendly societies, cooperatives and employee-owned companies, all of which tend to have smaller income differences within them.
This essay is based on an interview with Liz Else
Read more: 鈥�How to be happy: Putting well-being on the agenda鈥�
