Getting the egalitarian spirit back on the level

How rich or poor you are as an individual doesn't matter. What counts is the size of the divide between the rich and the poor in the society to which you belong. So goes the argument in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s The Spirit Level.

People who live in countries where the gap is greatest do relatively badly. And the impact of this gap extends across all aspects of their lives.

The Spirit Level has evidence on all kinds of indicators of child well-being, such as infant mortality, literacy and obesity. From that perspective, their account is a compendium of things that governments are responsible for – extending far beyond children and family matters. But, ironically, the simple remedy the book recommends – to reduce inequality – is one that most governments consistently shy away from; especially in the UK and the US where the disparities that Wilkinson and Pickett describe are most marked.

The UNICEF league tables of child well-being in rich nations, which put the UK and the US firmly in a relegation zone, have been the cause of much rueful self examination in both countries. The Spirit Level comes close to explaining why it should be that children in Britain and the States are unhappier, less well behaved, do less well in school and so on, than their peers in other economically developed nations. It is because the gap between the richest and poorest 20 per cent of the population, the most common inequality measure, is greater than among their competitor countries.

With the possible exception of Japan, the US is “richer” than any of them. And by the same crude measure, the UK is much richer than Spain. But Spain's children out-perform their counterparts in the UK and the US on nearly every front. And Scandinavia, where inequality approaches political anathaema, does better than them all.

How much does any of this broad brushwork matter? It points to bleaker evidence – for example that rates of mental illness in unequal nations are five times higher than in countries where there is a more equitable distribution of wealth. In countries with greater inequality, people are five times more likely to be imprisoned and six more times more likely to be obese.

One of the great achievements of the twentieth century was the reduction in infant mortality among rich nations. But, in England, progress has stalled. It will come as little surprise to learn that children born into rich families in England are less likely to die prematurely than those born into poor families. But it may disconcert the English upper and middle classes to know that children born to the richest families are more likely to die than children in the poorest families in Sweden.

In other words, inequality is not just a scourge for poor families. Inequality adversely affects the rich, the poor and all in between.

Publication of Wilkinson and Pickett's book has coincided with a crisis in capitalism and with recognition in the midst of the financial crisis of just how much the richest people pay themselves, and how extraordinarily inept the well paid can be.

All this said, their compelling argument for addressing the imbalance is not fully formed. We do not know why such variations occur. Will the impression of the daily drive through the poor barrios that separate my bay-view offices from my home in the hills grind guiltily away at my mental health? Or do the pursuit of unnecessary affluence and the struggle to make ends meet ultimately do similar damage?

What are the limits of the theory? Reduce them to a bell curve on a graph and some comparisons barely overlap: the well-being of the richest living in the most unequal nation is at level below that of the poorest living in the most equal.

But, considering some of the other examples, one begins to suspect that the extreme lack of well-being at one end of the distribution curve is dragging down the majority at the center, without making much difference to the condition of the children of the rich.

The underlying message for Western capitalism may be that have reached a turning point with respect to how we expect capitalism it. It may not be a reason for revolution: but more equality, it might be argued, might help the markets deliver more consistently positive returns (to which mercenary agenda, Wilkinson and Pickett would want to add the prospect of healthier and happier children and a longer life.

• The Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is published by Allen Lane. It is also available as an ePub and an eBook. Publication coincided with social activism in the form of The Equality Trust [1] to carry the findings further. The trust is promoting employee-owned businesses; it commissions research on equality issues, lobbies politicians and policymakers, and engages with the media.

UNICEF Report Card 7 An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries [2] was the seventh produced by the Innocenti Research Center [3] in Florence. Other report cards have dealt with: Child Poverty in Rich Nations, Child Deaths by Injury in Rich Nations, Teenage Births in Rich Nations, Educational Disadvantage in Rich Nations, Child Maltreatment Deaths in Rich Nations, Child Poverty in Rich Nations. Two instruments, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) figure prominently in the study.

Michael Little

See also:Leveling differences; raising spirits? [4]