Satisfaction Guaranteed! Fast Customer Service!!. Seller Inventory PSN Wilkinson, Richard. Publisher: Penguin UK , This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. View all copies of this ISBN edition:. About the Author : Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research and his work has been published in 10 languages. Buy New Learn more about this copy.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title. Search for all books with this author and title. Customers who bought this item also bought. Stock Image. Published by Penguin UK New paperback Quantity: 2. The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem — ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations — is more likely to occur in a less equal society.
The Spirit Level goes to the heart of the apparent contrast between the material success and social failings of many modern societies, but it does not simply provide a key to diagnosing our ills. It shows a way out of the social and environmental problems which beset us and opens up a major new approach to improving the real quality of life, not just for the poor but for everyone. To a surprising extent we find that, where inequality has flourished in order to drive up economic growth, then the impact has been to worsen outcomes for everyone.
This is important because for many years it has been accepted - on both the Left and the Right - that a high degree of income inequality may be necessary in order to promote economic growth - and growth was seen as the primary engine for positive social change.
But if it is inequality itself that damages society then simply spending more money on public services that supposedly benefit the poor will be futile. Rather than reducing inequalities itself, the initiatives aimed at tackling health or social problems are nearly always attempts to break the links between socio-economic disadvantage and the problems it produces.
The unstated hope is that people - particularly the poor - can carry on in the same circumstances, but will somehow no longer succumb to mental illness, teenage pregnancy, educational failure or drugs.
Of course like anything good and interesting the book has created enormous controversy and it leaves many questions unanswered. It is also clear from the data in the book that there are other factors - which the book does not explore - that shape wellbeing in our societies. Nevertheless, the power of the central findings are worth repeating - and at the very least they shift the burden of proof for policy-makers and theorists:. Perhaps this last fact - given that our politicians and civil servants are 'of the rich' - will be the key fact that will help change social policy in the UK.
However, for most of us, the first fact should be a powerful enough incentive to demand change. Part of the reason that this pattern is becoming clearer is that there is more and more available data about many aspects of wellbeing; and it is when we begin to focus on these other aspects of wellbeing - rather than on money itself - that the negative impact of inequality becomes clearer. Instead of focusing on wealth, the authors looked at:. They analysed this data against income inequality data for developed economies and for US states and in both cases they found that there was a strong correlation between the degree of income equality in each society and better performance against all these measure.
Fairer societies are better societies. The authors also tried to find some kinds of explanation for what may still seem a surprising conclusion, given that more equal societies may have lower levels of overall income than less equal societies. Their central hypothesis is that it is the psychological damage of excessive inequality that causes problems for the poor and the rich: we are all poorer if we feel that we are looked down upon by others, if we fear that we could be looked down upon by others, or even if we do look down on others.
The book cites a range of interesting research findings on this relationship between status and well being - one particularly striking example is given here:. They took high-caste and low-caste 11 and 12 year-old boys from scattered rural villages in India, and set them the task of solving mazes.
First the boys did the puzzles without being aware of each other's caste. Under this condition the low-caste boys did just as well with the mazes as the high-caste boys, indeed slightly better.
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