What Difference Does Inequality Make?

[Hannah Bell]

What Difference Does Inequality Make?
by Richard Wilkinson


What Greater Equality Brings

In societies where income differences between rich and poor are smaller, the statistics show that community life is stronger and more people feel they can trust others. There is also less violence -- including lower homicide rates; health tends to be better and life expectancy is higher....prison populations are smaller, teenage birth rates are lower, maths and literacy scores tend to be higher, and there is less obesity.

...all these relationships have been demonstrated in at least two independent settings; among the richest developed societies, and among the 50 states of the USA... Some of them have already been shown in large numbers of studies -- there are over 170 looking at the tendency for health to be better in more equal societies and something like 40 looking at the relation between violence and inequality. ...it does look as if the scale of inequality is the most important single explanation for the huge differences in the prevalence of social problems between societies...

The most obvious explanation for these patterns is that more unequal societies have more social problems because they have more poor people. But this is not the main explanation. Most of the effect of inequality is the result of worse outcomes across the vast majority of the population. In a more unequal society, even middle class people on good incomes are likely to be less healthy, less likely to be involved in community life, more likely to be obese, and more likely to be victims of violence. Similarly, their children are likely to do less well at school, are more likely to use drugs and more likely to become teenage parents...

Redistribution, Not Growth

The first thing to recognise is that we are dealing with the effects of relative rather than absolute deprivation and poverty. Violence, poor health and school failure are not problems which can be solved by economic growth. Everyone getting richer without redistribution doesn't help. Although economic growth remains important in poorer countries, across the richest 25 or 30 countries, there is no tendency whatsoever for health to be better among the most affluent rather than the least affluent of these rich countries. The same is also true of levels of violence, teenage pregnancy rates, literacy and maths scores among school children, and even obesity rates. In poorer countries both inequality and economic growth are important to outcomes such as health, but rich countries have reached a level of development beyond which further rises in material living standards do not help reduce health or social problems...

However, within each country, ill health and social problems are closely associated with income. The more deprived areas in our societies have more of most problems. So what does it mean if the differences in income within rich societies matter, but income differences between them do not? It tells us that what matters is where we stand in relation to others in our own society. The issue is social status and relative income...

Social Relations and Hierarchy

This... suggests that inequality damages the quality of social relations. Indeed, this must be one of the most important ways inequality affects the quality of life. In the most unequal of the 50 states of the USA, 35 or 40 percent of the population feel they cannot trust other people, compared to perhaps only 10 percent in the more equal states. The international differences are at least as large. Measures of "social capital" and the extent to which people are involved in local community life also confirm the socially corrosive effects of inequality...

But how can social status differences affect health? There is a health gradient running right across society, from the bottom to the top. Even the comfortably off middle classes tend to have shorter lives than those who are very well off. Having a house with a smaller lawn to mow, or one less car, is not a plausible explanation for these differences. Research has now shown the importance to health of psychological and social factors. Friendship, sense of control, and good early childhood experience are all highly protective of health, while things like hostility, anxiety, and major difficulties are damaging. The many pathways through which chronic stress makes us more vulnerable to disease are becoming clearer. Stress compromises the immune and cardiovascular systems and increases our vulnerability to so many diseases that it has been likened to more rapid ageing...

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wilkinson160309p.html