The more unequal a society’s income distribution, the more health and social problems ail both the rich and the poor.
With this theory brought to his attention through the “quite fascinating book” The Spirit Level, Nicolas Baumard displays the evidence to support the theory that economic inequality is bad for all inhabitants of a country before considering some possible explanations, and looking at what this means in terms of poverty and climate change.
It is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. In [The Spirit Level], [the authors] demonstrate that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone – the well-off as well as the poor […]. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses are like a ‘spirit level’ which we can hold up to compare the conditions of different societies. 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.
Baseball fan? Baumard also points out that “the more equal the salaries in a base-ball team are, the better its performance”.