The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

by Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett

Overview

The eye-opening and headline-generating UK bestseller that shows how one single factor—the gap between its richest and poorest members—can determine the health and well-being of a society.

"This is a book with a big idea, big enough to change political thinking…In half a page [The Spirit Level] tells you more about the pain of inequality than any play or novel could."—Sunday Times (UK )

It is well established that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Now a groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, takes an important step past this idea. The Spirit Level shows that there is one common factor that links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them—the well-off as well as the poor.

The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level reveals striking differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America's fifty states. Almost every modern social problem—ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

Wilkinson and Pickett lay bare the contradiction between material success and social failure in today's world, but they do not simply provide a diagnosis of our woes. They offer readers a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. The Spirit Level is pioneering in its research, powerful in its revelations, and inspiring in its conclusion: Armed with this new understanding of why communities prosper, we have the tools to revitalize our politics and help all our fellow citizens, from the bottom of the ladder to the top.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608190362
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	12/22/2009
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.46(w) x 9.58(h) x 1.26(d)

About the Author

Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research in inequalities in health and his work has been published in 10 languages. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London.


Kate Pickett is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a former National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. She is the co-founder of The Equality Trust. She studied physical anthropology at Cambridge, nutritional sciences at Cornell and epidemiology at Berkeley before spending four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword Robert B. Reich ix

Preface xiii

Acknowledgements xvii

Note on Graphs xix

Part 1 Material Success, Social Failure

1 The end of an era 3

2 Poverty or inequality? 15

3 How inequality gets under the skin 31

Part 2 The Costs of Inequality

4 Community life and social relations 49

5 Mental health and drug use 63

6 Physical health and life expectancy 73

7 Obesity: wider income gaps, wider waists 89

8 Educational performance 103

9 Teenage births: recycling deprivation 119

10 Violence: gaining respect 129

11 Imprisonment and punishment 145

12 Social mobility: unequal opportunities 157

Part 3 A Better Society

13 Dysfunctional societies 173

14 Our social inheritance 197

15 Equality and sustainability 217

16 Building the future 235

Postscript - Research Meets Politics 273

The Equality Trust 299

Appendix 301

Sources of Data for the Indices of Health and Social Problems 306

Statistics 310

References 312

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

Popular wisdom would tell us that poverty is the breeding ground for many of society's ills. But British academics Wilkinson (emeritus, Univ. of Nottingham Medical Sch.) and Pickett (senior lecturer, Univ. of York) argue otherwise. They've woven together a great deal of international research to show that inequality, not poverty per se, is what contributes most to social problems. The authors not only compare data from a range of countries but also gather data from all 50 states to verify that relationships that exist on a national level also exist on a more local scale. The first element examined is trust as a measure of community life and social relations. Once it is established that people in unequal societies don't trust one another, the stage is set to examine a host of other dystopian problems from mental health to teenage births to social mobility. VERDICT In this fascinating sociological study, the authors do an excellent job of presenting the research, analyzing nuances, and offering policy suggestions for creating more equal and sustainable societies. For all readers, specialized or not, with an interest in understanding the dynamics today between economic and social conditions.—Carol J. Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin-Whitewater Lib.

Library Journal

Predatory capitalism makes some of us poor and some of us rich, of course, but it also makes most of us sick, crime-ridden and mad-or so two British social scientists contend. In a scholarly work that is already exciting widespread discussion outside the academy, Wilkinson (Univ. of Nottingham Medical School) and Pickett (Univ. of York) show that by nearly every measure of the quality of life, societies with high income inequality fare more poorly than those with a more even distribution of wealth. In the United States, writes former labor secretary Robert Reich in the foreword, the top one percent of earners has tripled its share of the economy since 1980-when, not coincidentally, Ronald Reagan came to power and began to deregulate everything. Reich scorns the thought that the Obama administration should be branded socialist for wanting to return some social controls to 1980 and even 1990 levels. Wilkinson and Pickett are measured and even cautious in advancing their interpretations of the data, which are full of curiosities. In unequal countries, for instance, women suffer from greater levels of certain kinds of mental illness than do men, and some diseases-particularly heart-related illnesses and obesity-seem strongly correlated to disparities in wealth distribution. Everywhere, the links between legalized robbery and other kinds of crime are strong. The authors relate much of the problem to the overall phenomenon of anxiety-perhaps not the most scientific of diagnostic words, but one that does the job. Ultimately, they urge a return to the concept that liberty and equality are connected-the idea that they are not "seems to have emerged during the Cold War."A book full of dangerousideas and useful statistics, all worthy of attention, discussion and action. Author tour to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Ore.

Kirkus Reviews

"This is a book with a big idea, big enough to change political thinking." - John Carey, Sunday Times (UK)

"Might be the most important book of the year." - John Crace, Guardian

"Anyone who believes that what society is the result of what we do, rather than who we are, should read The Spirit Level because of its inarguable battery of evidence, and because its conclusion is simple: we do better when we're equal." - Lynsey Hanley, Guardian

"The importance of the Spirit Level is that it provides a vital part of the intellectual manifesto on which the battle for a better society can be fought." - Roy Hattersley, The New Statesman

"An eloquent case that the income gap between a nation's richest and poorest is the most powerful indicator of a functioning and healthy society" - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher