Almost all social problems have the same root cause

[Hannah Bell]

Quietly spoken, late middle-aged and quintessentially English, Richard Wilkinson is the last person you would expect to come up with a sweeping theory of everything. Yet that's precisely what this retired professor from Nottingham medical school, in collaboration with his partner, Kate Pickett, a lecturer at the University of York, has done.

The opening sentence of their new book, The Spirit Level, cautions, "People usually exaggerate the importance of their own work and we worry about claiming too much" - yet by the time you reach the end you wonder how they could have claimed any more. After all, they argue that almost every social problem common in developed societies - reduced life expectancy, child mortality, drugs, crime, homicide rates, mental illness and obesity - has a single root cause: inequality.

And, they say, it's not just the deprived underclass that loses out in an unequal society: everyone does, even the better off. Because it's not absolute levels of poverty that create the social problems, but the differentials in income between rich and poor. Just as someone from the lowest-earning 20% of a more equal society is more likely to live longer than their counterpart from a less equal society, so too someone from the highest-earning 20% has a longer life expectancy than their alter ego in a less equal society.

Take these random headline statistics. The US is wealthier and spends more on health care than any other country, yet a baby born in Greece, where average income levels are about half that of the US, has a lower risk of infant mortality and longer life expectancy than an American baby. Obesity is twice as common in the UK as the more equal societies of Sweden and Norway, and six times more common in the US than in Japan. Teenage birth rates are six times higher in the UK than in more equal societies; mental illness is three times as common in the US as in Japan; murder rates are three times higher in more unequal countries. The examples are almost endless.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/12/equality-british-society

[LWolf]

1. k&r

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. an amazing analysis of the obvious

For a while, Wilkinson and Pickett wondered if the correlations were too good to be true. The links were so strong, they almost couldn't believe no one had spotted them before, so they asked colleagues to come up with any other explanations. They looked at the religiosity of a society, multiculturalism, anything they could think of. They even looked at the possibility they had got it the wrong way round and it was the social problems that were causing the inequality. But nothing else stood up to statistical analysis.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/12/equality-british-society

[izquierdista]

3. Hidden in plain sight

Sometimes it takes a Sherlock Holmes to find things hidden out in the open like that.

[lunatica]

4. Never underestimate the power of stating the obvious

[trof]

5. K&R and I'm passing this around.

[Jim__]

6. I'll try to read that book because it sounds interesting.

However, I'm not convinced they've found the "root cause" of the social problems. Take just one example, The US is wealthier and spends more on health care than any other country, yet a baby born in Greece, where average income levels are about half that of the US, has a lower risk of infant mortality and longer life expectancy than an American baby. Is it specifically the totality of social inequality in the US and Greece that causes this statistic?

I don't think so, although I will agree that it's the distribution of health care itself. In other words, it's the inequitable distribution of health care in the US rather than overall inequality that leads to this statistic. This obviously leads to a correlation between inequality and mortality in the US. But, the overall inequality is more of a symptom that a cause in this case.

[unblock]

7. even if you're on the plus side of the inequality, there's much added stress

you have to fight to gain your unfair share, you have to worry about others getting their grubby paws on it, you have guilt and/or denial about the unfairness of it all, and so on, and you have to worry about the scenarios that cause you to to end up on the losing side of the deal.

that added stress over the course of a lifetime can't be healthy.

[Hannah Bell]

11. something i found thought provoking: in a less equal society, little things

like: the kind of car you drive -- have more meaning.

Wilkinson believes the answer lies in the psycho-social areas of hierarchy and status. The greater the differential between the haves and have-nots, the greater importance everyone places on the material aspects of consumption; what brand of car you drive carries far more meaning in a more hierarchical society than in a flatter one. It's the knock-on effects of this status anxiety that finds socially corrosive expression in crime, ill-health and mistrust.



e.g. in a more equal society, because the background assumptions are different, surface symbols of status have lower salience.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. another kick for an incredibly important article that eveyone should read in full

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. K/R

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. kicking

[undergroundpanther]

12. Income is one inequality

The biggest inequality is one of power.Our 'civilization' is built upon the dynamics of abused and abusers.Where one learns to dominate and expects everything ,the rest are taught to submit,to accept powerlessness,and accept their lives are worth, less.

[blindpig]

15. Money is power

Without the material means behind it 'power' is a flimsy thing.

[leftstreet]

13. K&R

Very interesting

[LWolf]

14. This is a great read. Thanks for posting it. nt