The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

[marmar]

from Dollars & Sense:



The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
by Polly Cleveland


Humans evolved in small, highly-cooperative groups. Today's surviving hunter-gatherer societies, like the !Kung of the Kalahari or the Hadza of the Rift Valley, teach toddlers their first lesson: share everything. In Mothers and Others (2009), Sarah Blaffer Hrdy argues that, some million and a half years ago, shared child care in fact set human ancestors on the path to becoming modern big-brained humans.

Inequality arose only some 10,000 years ago when humans invented agriculture, and "privatized" the land. (I prefer Adam Smith's term, "appropriated" the land; that is, took it away from the community.)

Given this history, perhaps it should not surprise us that modern inequality causes stress and social problems, not just among the very poor, but at all levels of society. That's just what Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett find in their new book, The Spirit Level Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.

There's a long history behind this book. Wilkinson, a British epidemiologist, published research over twenty years ago on the health and longevity of a large sample of British bureaucrats. None of these men were poor, and all had access to the free British health care system. Yet Wilkinson found a direct positive correlation between health and rank, from bottom to top. He hypothesized that inequality caused stress that in turn affected health. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/2010/03/spirit-level-why-greater-equality-makes.html