The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
Encyclopedia
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better is a book by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
, published in 2009 by Allen Lane. The book is published in the US by Bloomsbury Press (December, 2009) with the new sub-title: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. It was then published in a paperback second edition (UK) in November 2010 with the subtitle, “Why Equality is Better for Everyone”.
The book argues that there are "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption". It claims that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health
, drug abuse
, education
, imprisonment
, obesity
, social mobility
, trust and community life, violence
, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries.
The book contains graphs that are available online.
In 2010, the authors published responses to questions about their analysis on the Equality Trust website. As of December 2010, the book had sold more than 100,000 copies. It has been translated into 16 languages.
, Michael Sargent said that "In their new book, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett extend this idea" (of the harm caused by status differences) "with a far-reaching analysis of the social consequences of income inequality. Using statistics from reputable independent sources, they compare indices of health and social development in 23 of the world's richest nations and in the individual US states. Their striking conclusion is that the societies that do best for their citizens are those with the narrowest income differentials—such as Japan and the Nordic countries and the US state of New Hampshire. The most unequal—the United States as a whole, the United Kingdom and Portugal—do worst."
In the London Review of Books
University of Cambridge
lecturer David Runciman
said that the book fudged the issue of its subtitle thesis of its UK first edition, and asked whether it is that “in more equal societies almost everyone does better, or is it simply that everyone does better on average?" Later in the review he stated that, "More equality is a good thing and it’s an idea that’s worth defending." Richard Wilkinson responded to the review in a letter, claiming that "while pointing out that we do not have evidence on the fraction of one percent who are very rich, we show that people at all other levels of the social hierarchy do better in more equal societies".
In the European Sociological Review, sociologist John Goldthorpe
argued that the book relied too heavily on income inequality over other forms of inequality (including broader economic inequality
), and demonstrated a one-dimensional understanding of social stratification
, with social class
being in effect treated as merely a marker for income. He concluded that much more research was needed to support either the Wilkinson and Pickett "account of the psychosocial generation of the contextual effects of inequality on health or the rival neo-materialist account".
Richard Reeves in The Guardian
called the book "a thorough-going attempt to demonstrate scientifically the benefits of a smaller gap between rich and poor", but said there were problems with the book's approach. "Drawing a line through a series of data points signals nothing concrete about statistical significance [...] since they do not provide any statistical analyses, this can't be verified." He later noted that, "The Spirit Level is strongest on Wilkinson's home turf: health. The links between average health outcomes and income inequality do appear strong, and disturbing".
John Kay
in The Financial Times said that "the evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of scatter diagrams, with a regression line drawn through them. No data is provided on the estimated equations, or on relevant statistical tests". Boyd Tonkin, writing in The Independent
, described it as "an intellectual flagship of post-crisis compassion, this reader-friendly fusion of number-crunching and moral uplift has helped steer a debate about the route to a kinder, fairer nation. Will Hutton
in The Observer
described it as "A remarkable new book ...the implications are profound." Roy Hattersley
in the New Statesman
called it "a crucial contribution to the ideological argument", and the New Statesman
listed it as one of their top ten books of the decade.
Charles Moore
in The Daily Telegraph
declared it to be "more a socialist tract than an objective analysis of poverty". Gerry Hassan in The Scotsman
said that Wilkinson and Pickett's claim that "more equal societies almost always do better" was "a universal, sweeping statement - which cannot be substantiated by most of their data."
In 2010, Tino Sanandaji and others wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which they said, "when we attempted to duplicate their findings with data from the U.N. and the OECD, we found no such correlation". The same group of researchers published a report for the Taxpayer's Alliance providing details of their data analysis and coming to the conclusion that "the most straightforward measure of health simply has no robust correlation to income inequality when comparing industrialized countries using standard OECD and UN statistics". Pickett and Wilkinson addressed the Wall Street Journal article in a letter to the Journal and published a response to the Taxpayers Alliance report on their own site.
Peter Robert Saunders, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Sussex University, published a report for the think tank Policy Exchange
questioning the statistics in The Spirit Level. He claimed that only one of the correlations in the book—that between infant mortality and income inequality—stood up to scrutiny, and that the rest were either false or ambiguous. Wilkinson and Pickett published a response defending each of the claims in the book and accusing Saunders in turn of flawed methodology.
Christopher Snowdon
, an independent researcher and adjunct scholar at the Democracy Institute
, published a book largely devoted to a critique of The Spirit Level, entitled, The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's New Theory of Everything. One of its central claims is that Wilkinson excludes certain countries from his data without justification, such as South Korea
and the Czech Republic
. It also argues that Wilkinson and Pickett falsely claim the existence of a scientific consensus when much of the literature disagrees with their findings. Wilkinson and Pickett released a response to questions from Snowdon and responded to similar criticisms in the Wall Street Journal. Snowdon has in turn responded to their criticisms on his blog.
In response to criticism of the book, Wilkinson and Pickett posted a note on the Equality Trust website which stated: "Almost all of the research presented and synthesised in The Spirit Level had previously been peer-reviewed, and is fully referenced therein. In order to distinguish between well founded criticism and unsubstantiated claims made for political purposes, all future debate should take place in peer-reviewed publications."
In 2010, Richard Wilkinson was appointed the chair of Islington's Fairness Commission to look at ways of reducing income inequality in the London borough.
Kate Pickett
Kate Pickett is an English Epidemiologist who is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York and is a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. She is prominent for co-authoring the The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always...
, published in 2009 by Allen Lane. The book is published in the US by Bloomsbury Press (December, 2009) with the new sub-title: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. It was then published in a paperback second edition (UK) in November 2010 with the subtitle, “Why Equality is Better for Everyone”.
The book argues that there are "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption". It claims that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health
Mental health
Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
, drug abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
, education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, imprisonment
Imprisonment
Imprisonment is a legal term.The book Termes de la Ley contains the following definition:This passage was approved by Atkin and Duke LJJ in Meering v Grahame White Aviation Co....
, obesity
Obesity
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...
, social mobility
Social mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
, trust and community life, violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries.
The book contains graphs that are available online.
In 2010, the authors published responses to questions about their analysis on the Equality Trust website. As of December 2010, the book had sold more than 100,000 copies. It has been translated into 16 languages.
Part I. Material Success, Social Failure
- The end of an era
- PovertyPovertyPoverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
or inequalityEconomic inequalityEconomic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of...
? - How inequality gets under the skin
Part II. The Costs of Inequality
- Community life and social relations
- Mental healthMental healthMental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
and drug useRecreational drug useRecreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal... - Physical health and life expectancyLife expectancyLife expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
- ObesityObesityObesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...
: wider income gaps, wider waists - EducationEducationEducation in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
al performance - Teenage births: recycling deprivationDeprivationDeprivation may refer to:* Poverty* Relative deprivation* Sleep deprivation* Maternal deprivation...
- ViolenceViolenceViolence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
: gaining respect - ImprisonmentImprisonmentImprisonment is a legal term.The book Termes de la Ley contains the following definition:This passage was approved by Atkin and Duke LJJ in Meering v Grahame White Aviation Co....
and punishmentPunishmentPunishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group.... - Social mobilitySocial mobilitySocial mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
: unequal opportunities
Part III. A Better Society
- Dysfunctional societies
- Our social inheritance
- Equality and sustainabilitySustainabilitySustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
- Building the future
Reception
In a review for NatureNature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, Michael Sargent said that "In their new book, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett extend this idea" (of the harm caused by status differences) "with a far-reaching analysis of the social consequences of income inequality. Using statistics from reputable independent sources, they compare indices of health and social development in 23 of the world's richest nations and in the individual US states. Their striking conclusion is that the societies that do best for their citizens are those with the narrowest income differentials—such as Japan and the Nordic countries and the US state of New Hampshire. The most unequal—the United States as a whole, the United Kingdom and Portugal—do worst."
In the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
lecturer David Runciman
David Runciman
The Hon. David Walter Runciman is a British political scientist who teaches political theory at Cambridge University and is a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was educated following Eton College....
said that the book fudged the issue of its subtitle thesis of its UK first edition, and asked whether it is that “in more equal societies almost everyone does better, or is it simply that everyone does better on average?" Later in the review he stated that, "More equality is a good thing and it’s an idea that’s worth defending." Richard Wilkinson responded to the review in a letter, claiming that "while pointing out that we do not have evidence on the fraction of one percent who are very rich, we show that people at all other levels of the social hierarchy do better in more equal societies".
In the European Sociological Review, sociologist John Goldthorpe
John Goldthorpe
John Harry Goldthorpe FBA is a British sociologist and an emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He works in the areas of social stratification, macrosociology, and recently cultural consumption...
argued that the book relied too heavily on income inequality over other forms of inequality (including broader economic inequality
Economic inequality
Economic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of...
), and demonstrated a one-dimensional understanding of social stratification
Social stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...
, with social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
being in effect treated as merely a marker for income. He concluded that much more research was needed to support either the Wilkinson and Pickett "account of the psychosocial generation of the contextual effects of inequality on health or the rival neo-materialist account".
Richard Reeves in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called the book "a thorough-going attempt to demonstrate scientifically the benefits of a smaller gap between rich and poor", but said there were problems with the book's approach. "Drawing a line through a series of data points signals nothing concrete about statistical significance [...] since they do not provide any statistical analyses, this can't be verified." He later noted that, "The Spirit Level is strongest on Wilkinson's home turf: health. The links between average health outcomes and income inequality do appear strong, and disturbing".
John Kay
John Kay (economist)
John Kay is a leading British business economist of centrist persuasion.Kay was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh University, and Nuffield College, Oxford...
in The Financial Times said that "the evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of scatter diagrams, with a regression line drawn through them. No data is provided on the estimated equations, or on relevant statistical tests". Boyd Tonkin, writing in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, described it as "an intellectual flagship of post-crisis compassion, this reader-friendly fusion of number-crunching and moral uplift has helped steer a debate about the route to a kinder, fairer nation. Will Hutton
Will Hutton
William Nicolas Hutton is an English writer, weekly columnist and former editor-in-chief for The Observer. He is currently Principal of Hertford College, Oxford and Chair of the Big Innovation Centre , an initiative from The Work Foundation , having been Chief Executive of The Work Foundation from...
in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
described it as "A remarkable new book ...the implications are profound." Roy Hattersley
Roy Hattersley
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
called it "a crucial contribution to the ideological argument", and the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
listed it as one of their top ten books of the decade.
Charles Moore
Charles Moore (journalist)
Charles Hilary Moore is a British journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph.-Early life:He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge where he was awarded a BA in History and was a friend of Oliver Letwin.-Career:A former editor of The Spectator , the Sunday Telegraph and The...
in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
declared it to be "more a socialist tract than an objective analysis of poverty". Gerry Hassan in The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
said that Wilkinson and Pickett's claim that "more equal societies almost always do better" was "a universal, sweeping statement - which cannot be substantiated by most of their data."
In 2010, Tino Sanandaji and others wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which they said, "when we attempted to duplicate their findings with data from the U.N. and the OECD, we found no such correlation". The same group of researchers published a report for the Taxpayer's Alliance providing details of their data analysis and coming to the conclusion that "the most straightforward measure of health simply has no robust correlation to income inequality when comparing industrialized countries using standard OECD and UN statistics". Pickett and Wilkinson addressed the Wall Street Journal article in a letter to the Journal and published a response to the Taxpayers Alliance report on their own site.
Peter Robert Saunders, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Sussex University, published a report for the think tank Policy Exchange
Policy Exchange
Policy Exchange is a British conservative think tank based in London. The Daily Telegraph has described it as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right"...
questioning the statistics in The Spirit Level. He claimed that only one of the correlations in the book—that between infant mortality and income inequality—stood up to scrutiny, and that the rest were either false or ambiguous. Wilkinson and Pickett published a response defending each of the claims in the book and accusing Saunders in turn of flawed methodology.
Christopher Snowdon
Christopher Snowdon
Christopher John Snowdon is an author and freelance journalist based in the UK. He writes for Sp!ked and other publications. Snowdon was born in North Yorkshire in 1976 and studied history at Lancaster University, graduating in 1998....
, an independent researcher and adjunct scholar at the Democracy Institute
Democracy Institute
The Democracy Institute is a think-tank based in Washington, DC and London. It was founded in 2006.On its website the Institute says that "We commonly address public policy in comparative terms. Many of our research projects, therefore, have a transatlantic or international flavor...
, published a book largely devoted to a critique of The Spirit Level, entitled, The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's New Theory of Everything. One of its central claims is that Wilkinson excludes certain countries from his data without justification, such as South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
and the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
. It also argues that Wilkinson and Pickett falsely claim the existence of a scientific consensus when much of the literature disagrees with their findings. Wilkinson and Pickett released a response to questions from Snowdon and responded to similar criticisms in the Wall Street Journal. Snowdon has in turn responded to their criticisms on his blog.
In response to criticism of the book, Wilkinson and Pickett posted a note on the Equality Trust website which stated: "Almost all of the research presented and synthesised in The Spirit Level had previously been peer-reviewed, and is fully referenced therein. In order to distinguish between well founded criticism and unsubstantiated claims made for political purposes, all future debate should take place in peer-reviewed publications."
Impact
75 MPs signed the Equality Trust's 'Equality Pledge' prior to the UK's 2010 general election. Signatories promised to "actively support the case for policies designed to narrow the gap between rich and poor". Ed Miliband, leader of the British Labour party, has written about his admiration for The Spirit Level. His first speech as leader to the party conference contained several allusions to the book.In 2010, Richard Wilkinson was appointed the chair of Islington's Fairness Commission to look at ways of reducing income inequality in the London borough.
See also
- Gini coefficientGini coefficientThe Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper "Variability and Mutability" ....
- List of countries by income equality
- List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI (Human Development Index)
External links
- A debate of The Spirit Level - Videotaped debate featuring Christopher Snowdon and Peter Saunders as well as the authors of the book.
- How economic inequality harms societies - TED talk by Richard Wilkinson.
- The Equality Trust - A not-for-profit body established to further the cause of Equal Societies, as proposed in the book. Contains a slide presentation of the main charts in the book.
- Time magazine - Q & A: The Importance of Economic Equality
- We need Occupy to help deliver equality by Kate Pickett in the Guardian