TheSpiritLevel

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"The Spirit Level : Why Equality Is Better for Everyone" is a book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

DouglasReay writes: The theory is that for countries above a certain GDP (roughly corresponding to the 34 [members of the OECD]), how equal incomes are within a country are a better predictor for many social phenomena that how high the incomes are compared to other OECD countries.

The proposed mechanism is that income inequality leads to mistrust and insecurity. So not only is there depression and low self-esteem for those with lower social status, but the inequality also leads to more stress and anxiety for people all the way up the social scale.

Stress, in the short term, fills a useful role: the body ditches long term investment for the sake of readying the body for facing immediate peril (such as a long hike through a storm, a famine, carrying a sick infant away from a forest fire, etc). But if it goes on for months and years, rather than for hours or days, then it has negative consequences. The changed eating patterns (a preference for high energy foods) and abdominal fat deposition lead to obesity, increased health problems and lowered life expectancy not just in the stressed individual, but also in the next generation (the "[thrifty phenotype]" hypothesis).

The graphs, comparing life expectancy rates (and other things) to income and then to income inequality, both between countries and between states within the USA, are compelling - it is a throughly evidenced book as far as the end results go that they are trying to explain.

If they're trying to construct a general argument from these specific cases, how do they account for the Soviet Union? - or are they all for bringing that back? --MoonShadow

They don't mention it specifically (it isn't an OECD country). They did mentioned that average life expectancy in East Germany went down post-reunification. --DouglasReay

: Seems a bit of an odd omission to just sweep the experience of half the globe with income equalisation under the carpet if they're generalising links and mechanisms. --MoonShadow

It talks a lot about violence, self-esteem, shame, and how these are related. I'll try to summarise...

It gives divides self-esteem into two types: Healthy Self-Esteem (based upon accurate self-knowledge and well founded confidence in strengths you do actually have) and Unhealthy Self-Esteem (a more fragile sort of egotism based upon denying the existence of your own weaknesses and talking yourself up into an inflated view of your own strengths). It mentions that most violence is initiated by young men (which is the range of ages that is also the peak of when they are looking for a sexual mate) in response to perceived shaming - a threat of loss of face. These are linked because face (social status) is a prime attribute on which women select their partners, so a threat to face (for young men) is a threat to their chances of reproducing and passing on their genes. And it ties these to income inequality by mentioning that most young men, even when shamed, don't react with violence because they have other trappings of status to fall back upon to maintain their self-esteem, such as good education, nice houses and cars, good jobs, new clothes, etc.

It goes on to tie this to reproductive strategy and general levels of trust and security (When you are secure about the future, you can afford to invest a lot in fewer children. When you are insecure, you tend to have more and hope some will survive.) by mentioning that the same demographics that lead to violence in men also correlate with unmarried teen pregnancies in women.

It then talks a bit about education, poverty traps, race and the failures of the prison system in unequal societies.

I'll add more when I've read the third part, about proposed solutions --DouglasReay

Ok, I've now finished the book. The third part is considerably weaker than the first two portions.

It seems to be advocating creating a popular political pressure for increasing equality (to counter the pressure from business) by spreding the information in the book.

But the solutions it hopes politicians will be moved by the pressure to enact seem to be a combination of re-distributive taxation (inheritance tax and higher tax rates for high income earners) and legislation to support unions and encourage worker buyouts of businesses (in other words, no share ownership by non-workers, and raise capital via loans rather than selling shares on the stock market).

However the evidence they present in favour of these solutions being effective is slim to non-existant, and (unlike the other sections) they don't have a chapter analysing flaws in their suggestions and the strengths of alternatives.

SocialMatters