The Wanton Wages of Income Inequality

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, reported in yesterday’s New York Times, about two-thirds of Americans now believe that there are “strong conflicts” between rich and poor in the United States. It appears that this new-found willingness to confront the reality of income inequality is one of many salubrious results of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and a message that Democrats will push increasingly (and appropriately) in the coming elections. And part of that reality is that even as they decry “class warfare,” Republicans have long promoted precisely the kind of income inequality that the rest of the country is finally coming to acknowledge.

And here is a further reality that needs acknowledgment: Income inequality isn’t only morally undesirable, it is literally hurtful to our social fabric as well as our personal health. This is the take-home message from a stunningly important book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, published in 2010 by Bloomsbury.

There are two minor aspects of this book that confuse me: 1. What does the title mean? There is no mention of “spirit level” in the index, nor, so far as I recall, even in the text; and 2. How to interpret the cover, which depicts a lot of goldfish crowded into a small bowl, in contrast to a single goldfish occupying a larger one. But these queries really are trivial, compared to the immense significance of the book itself.

Written by two highly regarded epidemiologists, The Spirit Level is a magisterial compilation of intelligible statistics gathered largely from the U.N. and the U.S. Census Bureau, all of which point in the same incontrovertible direction, showing that the common denominator in an extraordinary array of different measures of social dysfunction is … income inequality. There are many ways of assessing income inequality, and The Spirit Level employs a widely accepted one: the ratio of per capita income obtained by the top 20 percent in a population to that of the lowest 20 percent.

Significantly, Wilkinson and Pickett’s take-home message is not simply that poor people are less healthy or less happy than are rich people (although for very poor people and those in very poor countries, this is true), but rather, that both poor people and rich people in unequal societies are less healthy and less happy than are poor people and rich people in more equal societies. Among their findings, the following are especially important, and, let me emphasize, none are mere assertions; all are backed up by solid, independently generated data.

1. Not surprisingly, people in richer countries live longer than do people in poor countries. However, this difference pretty much disappears once per capita income exceeds about $10,000. Rich Americans, for example, do no better (in fact, a little bit worse) than comparatively impoverished residents of Costa Rica.
2. Within rich societies, health is related to income differences; it is not related, however, to income differences among different rich societies.
3. The U.S. has an unusually high degree of income inequality, followed by Portugal and the UK. Least unequal is Japan, followed closely by the Scandinavian countries.
4. Health and social problems are worse in countries that have more income inequality. The U.S.—most unequal of major countries in per capita income—consistently performs worst, followed by Portugal and the U.K., which have the next worst equality levels. Japan, the most income-equal, consistently has the best health and social levels, followed by the Scandinavian countries, which, as expected, are next best in income equality, too. In between are the other European democracies as well as Canada and Australia.

Here are some of their data, reprinted with permission.

1. infant mortality and income inequality

2. drug use and income inequality:

3. obesity and income inequality:

4. imprisonment and income inequality:

In addition, within the U.S., health and social problems are worse in states that have more income inequality. (This consistent finding generates greater confidence that in examining income inequality, the country comparisons presented above are identifying a highly relevant factor.)

I should also note that The Spirit Level contains much more data, accessibly presented, demonstrating, for example, that the impressive correlation between social problems and income inequality is not an arbitrary result of one or a small number of “outlier” factors. Thus, separate and significant correlations (complete with Pearson correlation coefficients and all the trappings of hard-headed science) exist independently for level of interpersonal distrust, mental illness, obesity, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment rates, and social immobility.

There is much to say about all this, not least a need to explore the causative factors that presumably underlie these correlations. Personal disclosure: I have a particular interest in Wilkinson and Pickett’s findings, in addition to the fact that they accord with my avowed political perspective, one that unblushingly values equality—of outcome, and not just of “opportunity” especially because the latter is so rarely independent of one’s pre-existing socio-economic state. Thus, my recent co-authored book, Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression and Seek Revenge (2011, Oxford UP), elaborated on a similar theme; namely, the role of “pain,” variously defined, in generating violence. I wish I had seen The Spirit Level when writing Payback. But I’ve seen it now, and you should, too.

I have no doubt that Wilkinson and Pickett will be vigorously contested by conservatives, convinced that they are driven by a neo-socialist agenda to “spread the wealth around.” But the real challenge for us all is to go beyond reflexive ideological opposition (or embrace) and to think long and hard about the implications of what appears to be a powerful, universal, statistically significant phenomenon, all the while asking ourselves what sort of society we want to inhabit, and to bequeath to our children.