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The spirit level: why more equal societies almost always do better
A groundbreaking work on the root cause of our ills, which is changing the way politicians think. Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show how almost everything—-from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy-—is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published December 22, 2009
About the author
Richard G. Wilkinson
27 books101 followersRichard G. Wilkinson (Richard Gerald Wilkinson; born 1943) is a British researcher in social inequalities in health and the social determinants of health. He is Professor Emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, having retired in 2008. He is also Honorary Professor at University College London.
He is best known for his 2009 book (with Kate Pickett) The Spirit Level, in which he argues that societies with more a equal distribution of incomes have better health outcomes than ones in which the gap between richest and poorest parts society is greater. His 1996 book Unhealthy Societies: The Affliction of Inequality had made the same argument a decade earlier.
He is best known for his 2009 book (with Kate Pickett) The Spirit Level, in which he argues that societies with more a equal distribution of incomes have better health outcomes than ones in which the gap between richest and poorest parts society is greater. His 1996 book Unhealthy Societies: The Affliction of Inequality had made the same argument a decade earlier.
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August 26, 2011
There was a moment in Freakonomics where the authors say that the reason violent crime has dropped in America is that there are less people being born now into abject poverty and this is mostly due to access to abortion. When I first read this I thought it was a very interesting correlation. I was even prepared to accept it as probably an accurate description, a kind of ‘fact of life’. But let’s say the same thing in a somewhat less intellectually appealing style. “Bennett (former U.S. Secretary of Education) said, ‘But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down’.” There is something about the idea of the guy responsible for education in a country saying such a thing that really sends a shiver down my spine. It is like something you might expect to read from a ‘concerned member of the Nazi party’ in 1928 perhaps.
Everyone knows that correlation does not imply causation – in fact, if you are the sort of person who likes to get by without having to think too much, but still likes to be thought of as a bit clever then that should become one of your main catch phrases. Unfortunately, although correlation doesn’t imply causation, the real message here is that causation is impossible without correlation, so the fact two things are correlated doesn’t automatically mean there is no causal relationship. And just as importantly, the relationship between correlation and causation isn’t so vague that we get to choose what is the cause on the basis of our ideological preferences. There are statistical tests of causation too, just as there is common sense.
A long time ago people used to talk about more than just freedom, but today freedom is our abstract noun of choice. Don’t get me wrong, like Communism, freedom is a really lovely idea in theory. You don’t have to be a lion to get a kick out of humming along with Born Free. The problem is that people seem to have decided that ‘freedom’ means very strange things. For example, we are ‘free’ to drive around in cars the size of living rooms we call SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles) although none of us ‘do’ sports anymore – properly, they ought to be called TTPs (Trash The Planets). This book speculates that the reason why these cars have become so popular is that in grossly unequal societies our lack of trust in those around us forces us to have cars that make us look intimidating. Here in Australia we live on the driest inhabited continent on earth, but there are still those who believe they should be ‘free’ to hose down concrete. And then the most bizarre of all ‘freedoms’ – our god given freedom to stop homosexuals from marrying.
The simplest of all moral maxims would seem to be that your freedom to swing your fists around ends where my nose starts – that your freedom should not impinge on the freedom of anyone else. It is ‘the golden rule’ and the main reason we had to nail that Jesus guy to a tree. But it seems that the most common view of freedom is the very opposite of this – my freedom is only ever really worth having if it imposes costs on everyone else.
Such a notion of freedom is, of course, obligatory in our grossly unequal world. The USA and Canada have a bit over 5% of the world’s population but account for 26% of the world’s CO2 emissions – you don’t really get to have five times your ‘share’ in an equal world. So, is it any wonder that equality has become quite so unpopular?
There are lots of strange things I simply don’t understand about our world. Talk to the average person and they will tell you just how ‘different’ they are, how uniquely individual they feel – in fact, they may even suggest, if pressed, that it is this very feeling of uniqueness that is at the heart of their sense of freedom – that freedom is the freedom to ‘be yourself’, to express your ‘individuality’. But let’s pretend we are aliens and have just arrived on Earth. Somehow we have gotten a bit lost, we made a sharp right instead of the usual left at the turnpike and rather than finding ourselves out on some dirt road somewhere in the arse end of no where conducting our intensely interesting research into the anatomy of the human rectum (‘Righto boyo, drop them, we have an anal probe with your name on it’) we end up where most Earthlings live – in some remarkably over-crowded city. What would we aliens make of these Earthlings? I suspect we would hardly think, ‘Wow, look at how many of them there are –and yet, it seems that all of them are living their own authentically unique lives, it really is a miracle of freedom’. Rather, I think we would most likely see humans as a species of overgrown ants.
Perhaps it is the fact that our freedom is so remarkably limited that we like to exaggerate it so much. The problem is that the best way we can think of ‘displaying’ our ‘freedom’ mostly seems to involve our being told by televisions and magazines things to buy that will make us stand out in the crowd.
Now, what this book does not say is that the main problem is poverty. In fact, it says almost the opposite – this book only looks at advanced market economies – so the standard rightwing nonsense about us all having to ‘live in Cuba’ rings a little hollow. The conclusion they make isn’t that the poorest countries have the worst outcomes, but rather that no matter how rich or poor a country is, it will have worse outcomes according to the greater the level of inequity the country has.
I recently got into an argument with someone on Good Reads about my ‘politics of envy’ – my belief that the gross levels of inequity in the US (and increasingly also here in Australia) are destroying our social fabric. The statistics in this book show that societies with the greatest inequities within their economy will have very predictable ‘problems’, such as higher crime rates, teenage pregnancy, infant mortality, education failure, health issues and social alienation. Inequity pushes us to distrust those around us, encourages us to live in gated communities, to employ private police (a figure I read recently was that there are more private police in the US then there are public police – since 1984 California built one new collage and twenty-one new prisons, such being our preferences) and therefore to live in a state of near constant fear.
But we like to assume – as rugged individuals – that as long as we are okay, everything is okay. Sure, we might need to have armed guards and high walls, but in our own little slice of heaven the rest of the world can crumble and collapse around us, as long as we have the ability to hold back entropy in our own private brave new world. This book shows that for a very long list of issues living in a grossly inequitable society isn’t just bad for those at the bottom (and it is appallingly bad for them, obviously) – that is, those we can blame for their own victimhood – but it is bad for everyone. Some of the figures show that the least well off in more equal countries have better health and life expectancy outcomes that the most well off in unequal countries.
Naturally enough the country with the worst of all outcomes is the most unequal country – the USA. The authors make the disturbing claim that if the US went from being by far the most unequal society to being among the average of the most equal countries (you know – on a par with those crazy socialist countries like Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden) that “the proportion of the population feeling they could trust others might rise by 75 per cent … rates of mental illness and obesity might similarly each be cut by almost two thirds, teenage birth rates could be more than halved, prison populations might be reduced by 75 per cent, and people could live longer while working the equivalent of two months less per year.” You see – because happiness stops being related to the amount of stuff you have above a certain minimum much of the time we now spend at work is spent earning money to buy things we not only don’t need, but actually do little to help to increase our happiness.
Something needs to give. The planet cannot sustain our endlessly growing rates of consumption and our rapacity. The immorality of the few taking virtually all while the rest are left gapping is the very basis for envy – the rightwing are right about that – but our system is based on an ever growing sense of envy. It is the prime motivator behind much of our advertising – it seems somewhat hard to believe rightwing types when they complain that envy is a deadly sin – as if this was the only of the seven deadly sins that still applies (we are all to ignore their pride, gluttony, lust, slothfulness, wrath and greed, but to apologise because we want for our kids what is an unquestioned right for theirs).
This book might make you angry – but it will also give you a sense of hope. Both your anger and your hope are required, though, I’m afraid.
Everyone knows that correlation does not imply causation – in fact, if you are the sort of person who likes to get by without having to think too much, but still likes to be thought of as a bit clever then that should become one of your main catch phrases. Unfortunately, although correlation doesn’t imply causation, the real message here is that causation is impossible without correlation, so the fact two things are correlated doesn’t automatically mean there is no causal relationship. And just as importantly, the relationship between correlation and causation isn’t so vague that we get to choose what is the cause on the basis of our ideological preferences. There are statistical tests of causation too, just as there is common sense.
A long time ago people used to talk about more than just freedom, but today freedom is our abstract noun of choice. Don’t get me wrong, like Communism, freedom is a really lovely idea in theory. You don’t have to be a lion to get a kick out of humming along with Born Free. The problem is that people seem to have decided that ‘freedom’ means very strange things. For example, we are ‘free’ to drive around in cars the size of living rooms we call SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles) although none of us ‘do’ sports anymore – properly, they ought to be called TTPs (Trash The Planets). This book speculates that the reason why these cars have become so popular is that in grossly unequal societies our lack of trust in those around us forces us to have cars that make us look intimidating. Here in Australia we live on the driest inhabited continent on earth, but there are still those who believe they should be ‘free’ to hose down concrete. And then the most bizarre of all ‘freedoms’ – our god given freedom to stop homosexuals from marrying.
The simplest of all moral maxims would seem to be that your freedom to swing your fists around ends where my nose starts – that your freedom should not impinge on the freedom of anyone else. It is ‘the golden rule’ and the main reason we had to nail that Jesus guy to a tree. But it seems that the most common view of freedom is the very opposite of this – my freedom is only ever really worth having if it imposes costs on everyone else.
Such a notion of freedom is, of course, obligatory in our grossly unequal world. The USA and Canada have a bit over 5% of the world’s population but account for 26% of the world’s CO2 emissions – you don’t really get to have five times your ‘share’ in an equal world. So, is it any wonder that equality has become quite so unpopular?
There are lots of strange things I simply don’t understand about our world. Talk to the average person and they will tell you just how ‘different’ they are, how uniquely individual they feel – in fact, they may even suggest, if pressed, that it is this very feeling of uniqueness that is at the heart of their sense of freedom – that freedom is the freedom to ‘be yourself’, to express your ‘individuality’. But let’s pretend we are aliens and have just arrived on Earth. Somehow we have gotten a bit lost, we made a sharp right instead of the usual left at the turnpike and rather than finding ourselves out on some dirt road somewhere in the arse end of no where conducting our intensely interesting research into the anatomy of the human rectum (‘Righto boyo, drop them, we have an anal probe with your name on it’) we end up where most Earthlings live – in some remarkably over-crowded city. What would we aliens make of these Earthlings? I suspect we would hardly think, ‘Wow, look at how many of them there are –and yet, it seems that all of them are living their own authentically unique lives, it really is a miracle of freedom’. Rather, I think we would most likely see humans as a species of overgrown ants.
Perhaps it is the fact that our freedom is so remarkably limited that we like to exaggerate it so much. The problem is that the best way we can think of ‘displaying’ our ‘freedom’ mostly seems to involve our being told by televisions and magazines things to buy that will make us stand out in the crowd.
Now, what this book does not say is that the main problem is poverty. In fact, it says almost the opposite – this book only looks at advanced market economies – so the standard rightwing nonsense about us all having to ‘live in Cuba’ rings a little hollow. The conclusion they make isn’t that the poorest countries have the worst outcomes, but rather that no matter how rich or poor a country is, it will have worse outcomes according to the greater the level of inequity the country has.
I recently got into an argument with someone on Good Reads about my ‘politics of envy’ – my belief that the gross levels of inequity in the US (and increasingly also here in Australia) are destroying our social fabric. The statistics in this book show that societies with the greatest inequities within their economy will have very predictable ‘problems’, such as higher crime rates, teenage pregnancy, infant mortality, education failure, health issues and social alienation. Inequity pushes us to distrust those around us, encourages us to live in gated communities, to employ private police (a figure I read recently was that there are more private police in the US then there are public police – since 1984 California built one new collage and twenty-one new prisons, such being our preferences) and therefore to live in a state of near constant fear.
But we like to assume – as rugged individuals – that as long as we are okay, everything is okay. Sure, we might need to have armed guards and high walls, but in our own little slice of heaven the rest of the world can crumble and collapse around us, as long as we have the ability to hold back entropy in our own private brave new world. This book shows that for a very long list of issues living in a grossly inequitable society isn’t just bad for those at the bottom (and it is appallingly bad for them, obviously) – that is, those we can blame for their own victimhood – but it is bad for everyone. Some of the figures show that the least well off in more equal countries have better health and life expectancy outcomes that the most well off in unequal countries.
Naturally enough the country with the worst of all outcomes is the most unequal country – the USA. The authors make the disturbing claim that if the US went from being by far the most unequal society to being among the average of the most equal countries (you know – on a par with those crazy socialist countries like Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden) that “the proportion of the population feeling they could trust others might rise by 75 per cent … rates of mental illness and obesity might similarly each be cut by almost two thirds, teenage birth rates could be more than halved, prison populations might be reduced by 75 per cent, and people could live longer while working the equivalent of two months less per year.” You see – because happiness stops being related to the amount of stuff you have above a certain minimum much of the time we now spend at work is spent earning money to buy things we not only don’t need, but actually do little to help to increase our happiness.
Something needs to give. The planet cannot sustain our endlessly growing rates of consumption and our rapacity. The immorality of the few taking virtually all while the rest are left gapping is the very basis for envy – the rightwing are right about that – but our system is based on an ever growing sense of envy. It is the prime motivator behind much of our advertising – it seems somewhat hard to believe rightwing types when they complain that envy is a deadly sin – as if this was the only of the seven deadly sins that still applies (we are all to ignore their pride, gluttony, lust, slothfulness, wrath and greed, but to apologise because we want for our kids what is an unquestioned right for theirs).
This book might make you angry – but it will also give you a sense of hope. Both your anger and your hope are required, though, I’m afraid.
July 11, 2017
One study concluded that ‘income inequality exerts a comparable effect across all population subgroups’, whether people are classified by education, race or income – so much so that the authors suggested that inequality acted like a pollutant spread throughout society. Chapter 13
’Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. Emerson (Chapter 3)
for books which come to similar conclusions see bottom of review
The Spirit Level is a book whose importance will probably outweigh its influence. This is unfortunate.
It is a vast study, undertaken by the two authors (both trained in epidemiology) starting in the early 1980s. Their initial focus was “to understand the causes of the big differences in life expectancy – the ‘health inequalities’ – between people at different levels in the social hierarchy in modern societies.” From these beginnings, it grew, over the years, into a comprehensive study of how income inequality is correlated to, and indeed is at least part of the cause of, a host of social problems.
The methods employed are standard methods from their field, “used to trace the causes of diseases in populations – trying to find out why one group of people gets a particular disease while another group doesn’t, or to explain why some disease is becoming more common. The same methods can, however, also be used to understand the causes of other kinds of problems – not just health.”
The authors first focused on the question, How does income inequality relate to the incidence of health and social problems in the rich countries of the world? Then, to provide a different population in which to study the same general issue, they asked, How does income inequality relate to the incidence of health and social problems in the fifty states of the U.S.? See "Ch. 2" below.
Note: In the remainder of this over-long review, there are links to my Writing area where pieces that wouldn't fit have been placed. I've tried to keep all the most important things in the review proper, so these links needn't be followed unless you're interested.
A Reader’s Guide
Someone who may just want a brief overview, or a plan for reading just parts of the book, can see here.
Part One. Material Success, Social Failure or The Problem
Ch. 1. The End of an Era
Ch. 2. Poverty or Inequality?
The book uses, for comparing income inequality among developed nations, the ratio of the income received by the top 20% of income earners in the society, to that received by the bottom 20 per cent of the society – not only is it easy to understand, but it is provided ready-made by the United Nations. In the case of comparing income inequality between American states, they have used what’s called the “Gini” coefficient, because that number is favored by economists, and is available from the US Census Bureau.
For more details, and examples of the graphs used in the book, see here.
Ch. 3. How Inequality Gets Under the Skin.
The authors here present an overview of “why people in the developed world are so sensitive to inequality that it can exert such a major influence on the psychological and social well-being of modern populations.” (30)
Over 200 studies have documented a continuous upward trend in anxiety in the U.S. since the 1950s. By the late 1980s the average American child was more anxious than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. (34)
Self-esteem and social insecurity
Not only is the rise of anxiety alarming, it is also surprising in light of a well-documented rise in teenagers’ “self-esteem” in this same period. But the authors show that this seeming paradox actually turned out to further understanding on the causes of anxiety, and their relation to inequality.
In the rest of the chapter the authors explore further the ramifications of anxiety, and offer insight its connection to inequality within society.
(1) Social evaluative threats. Anxiety (as well as narcissism) are both caused by an increase in ‘social evaluative threat��. A wide variety of studies focusing on the stress hormone cortisol have been done. A meta-study of over 200 of these reports has found that, speaking of the types of stressor tasks used in different experiments,
tasks that included a social-evaluative threat (such as threats to self-esteem or social status), in which others could negatively judge performance … provoked larger and more reliable cortisol changes than stressors without these particular threats … suggesting that ‘Human beings are driven to preserve the social self and are vigilant to threats that may jeopardize their social esteem or status’.
The most powerful sources of stress affecting health seem to fall into three intensely social categories: low social status, lack of friends, and stress in early life. (37-9)
(2) Shame. One eminent sociologist has said that shame is the social emotion. Shame is “the range of emotions to do with feeling foolish, stupid, inadequate, defective, incompetent, awkward, exposed, vulnerable and insecure.” Shame (and pride) “provide the social evaluative feedback as we experience ourselves as if through others’ eyes.” Shame is the “pain through which we are socialized, so that we learn, from early childhood onwards, to behave in socially acceptable ways. (41)
(3) Mass society. In time long gone, our social context was our community, the neighborhood or small town we lived in. In today’s society sense of community has become lost, and we are “cast adrift in the anonymity of mass society.” At the core of our interactions with strangers is our concern at the social judgments and evaluations they might make … This vulnerability is part of the modern psychological condition and feeds directly into consumerism. (42)
(4) Greater inequality heightens people’s social evaluation anxieties. “Getting the measure of each other becomes more important as status differences widen. We come to see social position as a more important feature of a person’s identity. Between strangers it may often be the dominant feature.” Experiments indicate that we make judgments of each other’s social status “within the first few seconds of meeting” someone new. Surveys have found that when choosing prospective marriage partners, “people in more unequal countries put less emphasis on romantic considerations and more on criteria such as financial prospects, status and ambition …” (43-4)
(5) Self-promotion vs. modesty. Comparing the more unequal and more dysfunctional American society with that of Japan, there is a stark contrast:
In Japan, people choose a much more self-deprecating and self-critical way of presenting themselves, which contrasts sharply with the much more self-enhancing style in the USA. While American s are more likely to attribute individual success to their own abilities and their failures to external factors, the Japanese tend to do just the opposite. (44)
(6) A Revolutionary wrapup. The authors provide their own evaluation of the demand for Liberte, egalite, fraternite in the French Revolution:
’Liberty’ meant not being subservient or beholden to the feudal nobility and landed aristocracy … ‘fraternity’ reflects a desire for greater mutuality and reciprocity in social relations … and ‘equality’ comes into the picture as a precondition for getting the other two right. (45)
Part Two. The Costs of Inequality or The Data
Summary is here.
Part Three. A Better Society or The Solution
Ch. 13. Dysfunctional Societies.
Ch. 14. Our Social Inheritance.
Evidence that material self-interest is the governing principle of human life seems to be everywhere.
This chapter, while admitting the above, challenges the widely held belief that “greed and avarice are, as (mainstream) economic theory assumes, the overriding human motivations”; and in so doing provides an understanding of how, “without genetically re-engineering ourselves, greater equality allows a more sociable human nature to emerge.”
This chapter requires a very detailed summary.
Two Sides of the coin. Social status (hierarchical orderings based on power and coercion) and friendship (reciprocity, mutuality, sharing, social obligations, cooperation) are the two opposite ways in which human beings can come together.
Friend or Foe. All human beings have the same needs; hence they have (as Thomas Hobbes emphasized) the potential to be each other’s worst rivals; but human beings also have “a unique potential to be each other’s best source of cooperation, learning, love and assistance of every kind” – thus the potential to be each other’s greatest source of comfort and security.
Economic Experiments. Economic theory works on the assumption that human behavior is governed by “a tendency to maximize material self-interest.” Studies involving economic games (particularly the ‘ultimatum game’) are cited which indicate that this is not the case. Findings indicate that “at direct cost to ourselves, we come close to sharing equally even with people we never meet and will never interact with again.” The authors conclude that “The egalitarian preferences people reveal in the ultimatum game seem to fly in the face of the actual inequalities in our societies.”
Chimps and Bonobos. We are closely related genetically to both chimps and bonobos. These two species of ape have radically different social systems. Chimps settle sexual disputes with power (a dominance hierarchy); bonobos settle power disputes by having sex. Bonobos have a high degree of sexual equality in their groups, dominance hierarchies are much less pronounced, females, although smaller than males, are generally allowed to eat first. They engage in sexual activity very frequently, in all combinations of ages and sexes, in order to relieve tensions that in other species might cause conflict. And research has shown that bonobos are better at cooperative tasks than chimps. The genetic difference between chimps and bonobos involves a section of DNA which is known to be important in the regulation of social, sexual and parenting behavior. For what it’s worth, humans have the bonobo rather than the chimp pattern in this section of DNA.
The Social Brain. Humans are first and foremost social animals. We are continually preoccupied with social interaction – “what people have said, what they might have been thinking, whether they were kind, off-hand, rude …, why they behaved as they did, what their motivations were, how we should respond.” Research has shown that “conflicts and tensions with other people are by far the most distressing events in daily life in terms of both initial and enduring effects on emotional wellbeing – more so than the demands of work, money worries, or other difficulties … social interaction has been one of the most powerful influences on the evolution of the human brain.” All of this indicates why and how perceptions of inequality can affect us in extremely negative ways.
Our Dual Inheritance. We humans need to operate in both dominance hierarchies and in egalitarian societies. Dominance strategies “are almost certainly pre-human in origin”. ”Despite the modern impression of the permanence and universality of inequality, in the time-scale of human history and pre-history, it is the current highly unequal societies which are exceptional. For over 90 per cent of our existence as human beings we lived, almost exclusively, in highly egalitarian societies.” (See Hierarchy in the Forest). Modern inequality arose and spread with the development of agriculture, which replaced egalitarian foraging groups.
The chapter includes additional sections on Early Experience (of childhood), Mirror Neurons and Empathy, Oxytocin and Trust, and Co-operative Pleasure and Painful Exclusion. It concludes:
For a species which thrives on friendship and enjoys co-operation and trust, which has a strong sense of fairness, which is equipped with mirror neurons allowing us to learn our way of life through a process of identification, it is clear that social structures which create relationships based on inequality, inferiority and social exclusion must inflict a great deal of social pain. In this light we can perhaps begin not only to see why more unequal societies are so socially dysfunctional but, through that, perhaps also to feel more confident that a more humane society may be a great deal more practical than the highly unequal ones in which so many of us live now.
The material in this chapter, for me, built an utterly astounding case against assumptions that today seem to be accepted as unarguable truth: the Hobbesian view that humans are involved in a struggle to survive in the face of vicious competition with each other, and the related economic paradigm that we are all, by our very nature, engaged in a never-ending desire to maximize our own material well-being. THESE VIEWS ARE SIMPLY NOT TRUE!
I found it to be the highlight of the book.
Ch. 15. Equality and Sustainability.
The inclusion of this chapter indicates how deeply the authors believe the issue of inequality permeates every important aspect of life in the twenty-first century. It includes sections on Sustainability and the Quality of Life, Reducing Carbon Emission Fairly, New Technology Is Not Enough On Its Own, A Steady-State Economy, and a very long final section, Inequality and Consumerism. I found Figure 15.2 (Human wellbeing and sustainability) particularly interesting. It indicates that of all the 100+ countries shown on the scatter-diagram, Cuba is the only one that combines a quality of life above a “high human development threshold”, with an ecological footprint that is globally sustainable.
Ch. 16. Building the Future.
The above link is the summary of this concluding chapter. I've moved the final quote from there to here. It pretty well sums up the book's message for me:
Reducing inequality would not only make the economic system more stable, it would also make a major contribution to social and environmental sustainability.
Modern societies will depend increasingly on being creative, adaptable, inventive, well-informed and flexible communities … Those are characteristics not of societies in hock to the rich, in which people are driven by status insecurities, but of populations used to working together and respecting each other as equals … we must try to bring about a shift in public values so that instead of inspiring admiration and envy, conspicuous consumption is seen as part of the problem, a sign of greed and unfairness which damages society and the planet.
Martin Luther King said, ‘The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice’. Given that in human prehistory we lived in remarkably equal societies, maintaining a steady state – or sustainable – way of life in what some have called ‘the original affluent society’, it is perhaps right to think of it as an arc, curving back to very basic human principles of fairness and equality …
Reception in the mainstream media.
As I’ve indicated already, I found this book to be a life-altering read. While I acknowledge that there are minor details of the story that I have quibbles about, I believe that the authors have done a wonderful service to not only those living in first world countries with scandalous and growing income inequality, but also to peoples of countries outside the top tier of economic development. Their analysis of the way in which this one factor affects, and very likely is a contributing cause, to a host of social ills presents a powerful argument for the dismantlement of modern capitalism.
This conclusion, that modern capitalism is ruinous, is forcefully made by Organic Marxism and a chapter or two in (State of the World 2013). The former mostly stresses the ecological downside.
December 11, 2018
"Nor should we allow ourselves to believe that the rich are scarce and precious members of a superior race of more intelligent beings on whom the rest of us are dependent. That is merely the illusion that wealth and power create."
This refreshingly well-written book, based on scientific research, makes the case for a more equal world to benefit all social strata in our modern, developed democracies. Looking at the social issues that modern societies struggle with, the authors show in comprehensive graphs and analyses that more equal societies have less violence, less teenage pregnancies, less anxiety, and higher education and well-being. Various experiments on the human psyche's need to compare and contrast status within the community show that high levels of inequality seem to trigger high levels of fear, protectionism and anxiety, as well as a need to be recklessly pursuing risky projects in order to enhance relative status within the group. Actual wealth is less determining than relative position within the comparison.
The downside of a highly unequal, massively competitive society is evident: it triggers an uncontrolled consumerism which is ultimately leading to a climate catastrophe if it is not at some point reined in, and it leads to stress-related health issues which will lower life quality for great parts of society.
More equality is better for humankind as a whole, but paradoxically very hard to achieve, as long as the vicious circle of status competition is not broken. A new definition of social status roles needs to be strived for:
"We might hope that we will start to experience ourselves primarily as unranked members of the same society brought together in different combinations according to our various shared interests."
However, currently we still live in a world where consumerism defines desires, and where a small group of wealthy people have a disproportionate part in dictating public opinion in accordance with their status protectionism. Even though this book makes a clear and loud case for equality, I doubt that we will see any changes in mindset in the near future - the machine just keeps running, to our shared disadvantage.
But hope dies last, and books like this are needed! Recommended to all of us.
This refreshingly well-written book, based on scientific research, makes the case for a more equal world to benefit all social strata in our modern, developed democracies. Looking at the social issues that modern societies struggle with, the authors show in comprehensive graphs and analyses that more equal societies have less violence, less teenage pregnancies, less anxiety, and higher education and well-being. Various experiments on the human psyche's need to compare and contrast status within the community show that high levels of inequality seem to trigger high levels of fear, protectionism and anxiety, as well as a need to be recklessly pursuing risky projects in order to enhance relative status within the group. Actual wealth is less determining than relative position within the comparison.
The downside of a highly unequal, massively competitive society is evident: it triggers an uncontrolled consumerism which is ultimately leading to a climate catastrophe if it is not at some point reined in, and it leads to stress-related health issues which will lower life quality for great parts of society.
More equality is better for humankind as a whole, but paradoxically very hard to achieve, as long as the vicious circle of status competition is not broken. A new definition of social status roles needs to be strived for:
"We might hope that we will start to experience ourselves primarily as unranked members of the same society brought together in different combinations according to our various shared interests."
However, currently we still live in a world where consumerism defines desires, and where a small group of wealthy people have a disproportionate part in dictating public opinion in accordance with their status protectionism. Even though this book makes a clear and loud case for equality, I doubt that we will see any changes in mindset in the near future - the machine just keeps running, to our shared disadvantage.
But hope dies last, and books like this are needed! Recommended to all of us.
Read
June 22, 2019This is an interesting attempt to support something like evidence based political economy. As a diagnosis of individuals and societies it is striking and impressive combining both long-term individual data from the Whitehall studies of British civil servants to country level outcome comes using World Health Organisation data.
As political polemic of course it has sunk with barely a ripple. The brief controversy showed that the problem with any evidence based approach is that on the whole we prefer to stick with our prejudices than accept facts and proofs or even to have a reasonable conversation about data and directions of causation. Everybody has feelings and we can all have an emotional response to social problems and in the wide gap between that and any consideration of data, prejudices grow luxuriantly.
In some ways this book contains the empirical evidence that you don't find in The Theory of the Leisure Class, it's also less polysyllabic. The flip side of this is that I don't think it is saying much if anything beyond what Veblen had to say at the dawn of the century, rather it reaches similar conclusions from the perspective of looking at the long term health of national populations.
Unfortunately it is precisely because the book proves that we are cultural creatures in a social environment and sensitive to the status signals that surround us that demonstrates that the message of the book will be difficult to accept and that it will struggle to make political headway in less egalitarian societies. The way out of the downward cycle of the invidious comparison is not easy, if indeed any such exit is possible even if it was considered desirable.
As political polemic of course it has sunk with barely a ripple. The brief controversy showed that the problem with any evidence based approach is that on the whole we prefer to stick with our prejudices than accept facts and proofs or even to have a reasonable conversation about data and directions of causation. Everybody has feelings and we can all have an emotional response to social problems and in the wide gap between that and any consideration of data, prejudices grow luxuriantly.
In some ways this book contains the empirical evidence that you don't find in The Theory of the Leisure Class, it's also less polysyllabic. The flip side of this is that I don't think it is saying much if anything beyond what Veblen had to say at the dawn of the century, rather it reaches similar conclusions from the perspective of looking at the long term health of national populations.
Unfortunately it is precisely because the book proves that we are cultural creatures in a social environment and sensitive to the status signals that surround us that demonstrates that the message of the book will be difficult to accept and that it will struggle to make political headway in less egalitarian societies. The way out of the downward cycle of the invidious comparison is not easy, if indeed any such exit is possible even if it was considered desirable.
May 20, 2015
Introduction....
I have now read a detailed blog listing many arguments against this book, and whilst I still think The Spirit Level is a provocative and interesting read, I think it is best read in conjunction with the blog...
http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.c...
(or see my comment, message 25 below, for a short description of the blog).
Review....
This book is about statistics, so it is going to be very hard for me to convey the excitement of reading it. It IS exciting though, and figure by figure, chart by chart, it unfolds an extraordinary story. A story all about money and human welfare.
It is written by two professors of epidemiology. Statisticians who got a list of the 50 richest countries in the world from the World Health Organisation. They then picked out those countries with clear information about income differences between people, and they ended up with 23 countries in total.
Now for the nub of the story….looking at a wide range of factors, they found that societies where money is shared more equally between people are tons better – for everyone - than societies with big inequalities.
The US and the UK come right up at the top of the list when it comes to economic inequality, along with Singapore. The countries who come out best are Japan and Scandinavia. In the latter countries their citizens have equality for completely different reasons, but these differences are irrelevant. The thing that matters is that the quality of life for people in these countries - across a whole range of factors, and throughout the different stratas of society – is infinitely better. Inequality and big wage differences obviously affect those at the bottom of society most of all, but the effect is experienced by everyone, except perhaps for the odd billionaire at the top of the pile.....and it doesn't do anyone any good.
The book ends with a look at problems like global warming and environmentalism, and ways in which different practices might help countries become more sustainable and equal. The more enthusiastic corporate wallahs amongst us might want to take a tranquilliser before reading this section.
I found this book utterly gripping, and difficult to put down. In spite of feelings of scepticism at the beginning, the facts are really quite astonishing and persuasive, and I found myself being won over.
Herewith some links that may be of interest.
1) I thought their research was good. Herewith a link to the background statistics and their methodology.
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/reso...
2) Here is a 16 minute TED lecture on the book. It’s just a taster though, and I would definitely recommend reading the book.
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resou...
3) And here is an article in today’s Guardian talking about Britain’s inequalities…
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2...
Finally, I found the book full of interesting information, and include here some bits and pieces - just for my own record - that I want to remember.
I have now read a detailed blog listing many arguments against this book, and whilst I still think The Spirit Level is a provocative and interesting read, I think it is best read in conjunction with the blog...
http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.c...
(or see my comment, message 25 below, for a short description of the blog).
Review....
This book is about statistics, so it is going to be very hard for me to convey the excitement of reading it. It IS exciting though, and figure by figure, chart by chart, it unfolds an extraordinary story. A story all about money and human welfare.
It is written by two professors of epidemiology. Statisticians who got a list of the 50 richest countries in the world from the World Health Organisation. They then picked out those countries with clear information about income differences between people, and they ended up with 23 countries in total.
Now for the nub of the story….looking at a wide range of factors, they found that societies where money is shared more equally between people are tons better – for everyone - than societies with big inequalities.
The US and the UK come right up at the top of the list when it comes to economic inequality, along with Singapore. The countries who come out best are Japan and Scandinavia. In the latter countries their citizens have equality for completely different reasons, but these differences are irrelevant. The thing that matters is that the quality of life for people in these countries - across a whole range of factors, and throughout the different stratas of society – is infinitely better. Inequality and big wage differences obviously affect those at the bottom of society most of all, but the effect is experienced by everyone, except perhaps for the odd billionaire at the top of the pile.....and it doesn't do anyone any good.
The book ends with a look at problems like global warming and environmentalism, and ways in which different practices might help countries become more sustainable and equal. The more enthusiastic corporate wallahs amongst us might want to take a tranquilliser before reading this section.
I found this book utterly gripping, and difficult to put down. In spite of feelings of scepticism at the beginning, the facts are really quite astonishing and persuasive, and I found myself being won over.
Herewith some links that may be of interest.
1) I thought their research was good. Herewith a link to the background statistics and their methodology.
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/reso...
2) Here is a 16 minute TED lecture on the book. It’s just a taster though, and I would definitely recommend reading the book.
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resou...
3) And here is an article in today’s Guardian talking about Britain’s inequalities…
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2...
Finally, I found the book full of interesting information, and include here some bits and pieces - just for my own record - that I want to remember.
May 20, 2017
A pub quiz that asks you to name the world’s richest country seems too easy. The obvious answer – ‘the USA’ – is also the right one. It has an average income of more than $40,000 per head. But does this mean that the American dream has come true? What about if the question asked for the country with the greatest life expectancy? Or highest literacy rate? Or lowest number of infant deaths? Or lowest levels of mental illness? ‘The USA’ is not the right answer to any of these questions. But how can that be if it is the richest country in the world?
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have uncovered an unwelcome truth about being rich. It might be OK for the rich (though even this is debateable), but it’s no good for the ordinary citizens of an otherwise rich country, if the gap between them and the rich is too large. And this where the American dream falls apart: the country is rich, but far too few people share the riches. The gap between the rich and the poor – or the rich and the average – is bigger in the US than anywhere else.
What Wilkinson and Pickett do is to present the graphs in a different way. Instead of measuring progress against overall wealth, they measure it against the size of the gap between rich and poor. And – surprise, surprise – the USA turns out to have more in common with a lowly European country like Portugal than it does with Scandinavia and Japan. The Nordic countries limit the gap between the rich and poor through their taxes. In Japan, the gap is kept narrow by tradition – big Japanese corporations simply don’t pay their executives the exaggerated amounts paid in the US and – you guessed it – here in Britain.
Because we come out of it badly too. While not quite as badly off as the United States, we are worse off than most of our Northern European neighbours on a whole range of indicators, including infant deaths. And the reason appears to be the same – our inequality isn’t as bad as the USA or Portugal but it’s a lot worse than most other EU countries. Embarrassingly, the average Brit can expect to live as long as the average Cuban – because Cuba might be poorer but it is much more equal and (of course) also has a comprehensive, free health service.
This book covers such a range of factors – obesity, murders and even bullying (yes, we top the list!) – that it is surprising that housing is barely mentioned. Perhaps it would show Britain to be better off. No matter, the central message is the important one: societies that are more equal are better for everyone. There is hard evidence to prove it, and this book presents it in spade loads.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have uncovered an unwelcome truth about being rich. It might be OK for the rich (though even this is debateable), but it’s no good for the ordinary citizens of an otherwise rich country, if the gap between them and the rich is too large. And this where the American dream falls apart: the country is rich, but far too few people share the riches. The gap between the rich and the poor – or the rich and the average – is bigger in the US than anywhere else.
What Wilkinson and Pickett do is to present the graphs in a different way. Instead of measuring progress against overall wealth, they measure it against the size of the gap between rich and poor. And – surprise, surprise – the USA turns out to have more in common with a lowly European country like Portugal than it does with Scandinavia and Japan. The Nordic countries limit the gap between the rich and poor through their taxes. In Japan, the gap is kept narrow by tradition – big Japanese corporations simply don’t pay their executives the exaggerated amounts paid in the US and – you guessed it – here in Britain.
Because we come out of it badly too. While not quite as badly off as the United States, we are worse off than most of our Northern European neighbours on a whole range of indicators, including infant deaths. And the reason appears to be the same – our inequality isn’t as bad as the USA or Portugal but it’s a lot worse than most other EU countries. Embarrassingly, the average Brit can expect to live as long as the average Cuban – because Cuba might be poorer but it is much more equal and (of course) also has a comprehensive, free health service.
This book covers such a range of factors – obesity, murders and even bullying (yes, we top the list!) – that it is surprising that housing is barely mentioned. Perhaps it would show Britain to be better off. No matter, the central message is the important one: societies that are more equal are better for everyone. There is hard evidence to prove it, and this book presents it in spade loads.
March 7, 2017
Very solid read. Lots of great points and interesting analysis. Arguments seem well buttressed by research (although I haven't vetted any of the research so I have no idea how solid research may be or what holes there might be). That said the overall argument is strong to me, and the critiques and analysis hit a lot of notes in my political and economic philosophy.
Most interesting aspect that sticks in my mind, the concept of status and status-seeking. Beyond a certain point of consumerism, getting the basic food, clothing, and shelter necessities, consumption ends up being about curating what we buy and often times leveraging these consumer items to showcase our status. It's funny because this doesn't just happen with physical goods, but also with cultural consumption. It's actually something I wonder about from time to time. The example used in this book is James Joyce, generally considered canonical high-art/literature. One has to wonder how often one consumes culture and then says they like it not merely because they like it but because of what it says about us, it is a sort of signifier of class, education, status. So if everyone starts reading and liking Joyce, author's argument is that elites will find something else to like and consume. So the idea is that elites (whether cultural, political, economic, often all intertwined) use cultural tastes as status signifiers (not only group who uses cultural tastes as signifiers, its just they are the ones with power), and if something becomes overly popular and spread throughout the mass culture it is ditched, as it loses its value as an elite status signifier, it has become democratized. Even if it is good and we like it we don't say we like it because we are better than "the rest," we have higher culture and status and that separates us from the hoi polloi. Just kind of funny. Probably quite true to a point.
That general point does get to fascinating concepts of cultural consumption in general. Why do we like what we like in terms of culture, how are we using it to separate and distinguish us, signify our positions, but also in reverse unite us or put us an in group, and its role in creating social cohesion? Probably gets complicated and I honestly haven't read much on the subject. But for sure my tastes are not really of my own making, part of my time, place, background, class, and who knows how much this status-seeking is entangled in liking what I like. Kind of a fun thought experiment. Or disturbing. Depending on how you view it haha!
But I don't know, I do think it is counterbalanced by the fact that quality culture, quality art/literature/music eventually rises through the maelstrom regardless of how people are using these things as signifiers.
This book wasn't really focused on these questions, but it got me wondering about this stuff.
Most interesting aspect that sticks in my mind, the concept of status and status-seeking. Beyond a certain point of consumerism, getting the basic food, clothing, and shelter necessities, consumption ends up being about curating what we buy and often times leveraging these consumer items to showcase our status. It's funny because this doesn't just happen with physical goods, but also with cultural consumption. It's actually something I wonder about from time to time. The example used in this book is James Joyce, generally considered canonical high-art/literature. One has to wonder how often one consumes culture and then says they like it not merely because they like it but because of what it says about us, it is a sort of signifier of class, education, status. So if everyone starts reading and liking Joyce, author's argument is that elites will find something else to like and consume. So the idea is that elites (whether cultural, political, economic, often all intertwined) use cultural tastes as status signifiers (not only group who uses cultural tastes as signifiers, its just they are the ones with power), and if something becomes overly popular and spread throughout the mass culture it is ditched, as it loses its value as an elite status signifier, it has become democratized. Even if it is good and we like it we don't say we like it because we are better than "the rest," we have higher culture and status and that separates us from the hoi polloi. Just kind of funny. Probably quite true to a point.
That general point does get to fascinating concepts of cultural consumption in general. Why do we like what we like in terms of culture, how are we using it to separate and distinguish us, signify our positions, but also in reverse unite us or put us an in group, and its role in creating social cohesion? Probably gets complicated and I honestly haven't read much on the subject. But for sure my tastes are not really of my own making, part of my time, place, background, class, and who knows how much this status-seeking is entangled in liking what I like. Kind of a fun thought experiment. Or disturbing. Depending on how you view it haha!
But I don't know, I do think it is counterbalanced by the fact that quality culture, quality art/literature/music eventually rises through the maelstrom regardless of how people are using these things as signifiers.
This book wasn't really focused on these questions, but it got me wondering about this stuff.
April 17, 2012
First off I am going to admit that I did not finish this book. This is exceptionally rare for me, especially with non-fiction. However, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have produced a work of such little serious worth that I have been compelled to cease wading through its treacle-like flow for fear of the anger it brings on causing a heart attack.
Secondly, let me state plainly that I firmly believe that increased equality is advantageous to society in many, many ways. I think that an increased number of well educated, healthy people puts less of a burden on the state and pushes a society forward in terms of productivity and other measures of economic worth.
So, to the review. I should have known that when Wilkinson and Picket did not title their work 'Does Equality Make Societies Better', as a serious investigation would have, but rather plastered their biases all over the front cover, that the result would be poor.
Yet there is so much attempted good in here. The authors refuse to use their own measures, adopting only widely accepted scales. They draw evidence from a wide range of credible sources (the number of studies investigated is, frankly, staggering), and the work that they put in is worthy of much merit.
They appear, however, to have fallen into the giant hole that secondary school pupils are told about in their first science lessons (and which applies equally to 'the dismal science' of economics) - start out assuming nothing and having left your prejudices at the door. Allow me to provide quotes to back up my view.
"During the Second World War, for example, working class incomes rose by 9% while incomes of the middle class fell by 7%; rates of relative poverty were halved. The resulting sense of camaraderie and social cohesion not only led to better health - crime rates also fell." - at no point does it seem to cross the writers' minds to investigate whether working class incomes rose because thousands and thousands of men joined the army, or to ask whether this new-found 'camaraderie' was in fact linked to the burst of patriotism that accompanied the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and resulting conflict.
At another point the authors chose several graphs to aid a point they were trying to make about the idea that "Life expectancy is related to inequality in rich countries." The USA and UK have greater social inequality and lower life expectancy than Scandinavian nations and Japan. Would the healthy Japanese diet or active Scandinavian lifestyle not have anything to do with this? Not a word on the subject from Wilkinson and Pickett. The argument put forward on this point reminded me of the tale of the man who woke up one morning with his shoes on, suffering from a raging headache. He deduced that falling asleep without having removed one's footwear is bad for one's health, when in fact he should have realised that drinking a lot of alcohol can result in headaches and an inability to undo shoe laces or think about undressing before bed.
One more, to shuffle my tired point a little further along its path. The authors investigated mental health problems and their relation to inequality. They used many examples of what different psychologists, philosophers and economists have called 'status anxiety,' 'luxury fever,' and 'affluenza'. Apparently consumerism is to blame for mental health issues. By the time I got this far I was beginning to wonder when that great bogeyman 'consumerism' was going to have to take the fall for whatever ills the authors had discovered. Mental health issues have been around since time began, which is a small hole shot in this particular argumental boat; the vessel sinks altogether when we consider that many rich people are great consumers AND great sufferers from mental health issues - they can be confident, successful and wealthy, like buying things and STILL lack a vital chemical here or there which causes them undue sadness, depression or other mental ailment. The premise that the increase in products and related adjusted habits of the Western world is responsible for mental health crises is, at best, unproven. Few studies of undeveloped countries' issues and none of pre-consumer society exist for us to compare.
In conclusion I can only say that 'The Spirit Level' proved a disappointment to the point I reached. The authors clearly had their conclusion ready before they collated the evidence and failed to adequately question many of the findings to which they came. I regret that such an opportunity to rightly demonstrate that equality is good has been squandered, but squandered it has been and I can only compare the work of Wilkinson and Pickett to that of scientists who falsify climate change data to support their agenda - the result is quite the opposite.
This book has been saved from the dustbin of 1* only because nothing is as bad as Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.
Secondly, let me state plainly that I firmly believe that increased equality is advantageous to society in many, many ways. I think that an increased number of well educated, healthy people puts less of a burden on the state and pushes a society forward in terms of productivity and other measures of economic worth.
So, to the review. I should have known that when Wilkinson and Picket did not title their work 'Does Equality Make Societies Better', as a serious investigation would have, but rather plastered their biases all over the front cover, that the result would be poor.
Yet there is so much attempted good in here. The authors refuse to use their own measures, adopting only widely accepted scales. They draw evidence from a wide range of credible sources (the number of studies investigated is, frankly, staggering), and the work that they put in is worthy of much merit.
They appear, however, to have fallen into the giant hole that secondary school pupils are told about in their first science lessons (and which applies equally to 'the dismal science' of economics) - start out assuming nothing and having left your prejudices at the door. Allow me to provide quotes to back up my view.
"During the Second World War, for example, working class incomes rose by 9% while incomes of the middle class fell by 7%; rates of relative poverty were halved. The resulting sense of camaraderie and social cohesion not only led to better health - crime rates also fell." - at no point does it seem to cross the writers' minds to investigate whether working class incomes rose because thousands and thousands of men joined the army, or to ask whether this new-found 'camaraderie' was in fact linked to the burst of patriotism that accompanied the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and resulting conflict.
At another point the authors chose several graphs to aid a point they were trying to make about the idea that "Life expectancy is related to inequality in rich countries." The USA and UK have greater social inequality and lower life expectancy than Scandinavian nations and Japan. Would the healthy Japanese diet or active Scandinavian lifestyle not have anything to do with this? Not a word on the subject from Wilkinson and Pickett. The argument put forward on this point reminded me of the tale of the man who woke up one morning with his shoes on, suffering from a raging headache. He deduced that falling asleep without having removed one's footwear is bad for one's health, when in fact he should have realised that drinking a lot of alcohol can result in headaches and an inability to undo shoe laces or think about undressing before bed.
One more, to shuffle my tired point a little further along its path. The authors investigated mental health problems and their relation to inequality. They used many examples of what different psychologists, philosophers and economists have called 'status anxiety,' 'luxury fever,' and 'affluenza'. Apparently consumerism is to blame for mental health issues. By the time I got this far I was beginning to wonder when that great bogeyman 'consumerism' was going to have to take the fall for whatever ills the authors had discovered. Mental health issues have been around since time began, which is a small hole shot in this particular argumental boat; the vessel sinks altogether when we consider that many rich people are great consumers AND great sufferers from mental health issues - they can be confident, successful and wealthy, like buying things and STILL lack a vital chemical here or there which causes them undue sadness, depression or other mental ailment. The premise that the increase in products and related adjusted habits of the Western world is responsible for mental health crises is, at best, unproven. Few studies of undeveloped countries' issues and none of pre-consumer society exist for us to compare.
In conclusion I can only say that 'The Spirit Level' proved a disappointment to the point I reached. The authors clearly had their conclusion ready before they collated the evidence and failed to adequately question many of the findings to which they came. I regret that such an opportunity to rightly demonstrate that equality is good has been squandered, but squandered it has been and I can only compare the work of Wilkinson and Pickett to that of scientists who falsify climate change data to support their agenda - the result is quite the opposite.
This book has been saved from the dustbin of 1* only because nothing is as bad as Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.
Shelved as 'reviews-of-books-i-didnt-read'
October 8, 2017I can't read this at the moment because
a) I'm working on my own book called
BEING NICE IS GOOD : Why It Took Me 450 Closely Reasoned Pages to Say Something Bleeding Obvious - And What You Can Do To Stop Me Doing It Again
and
b) there will be a whole lot of Sweden in this book, which as you all know will cause a very bad reaction
a) I'm working on my own book called
BEING NICE IS GOOD : Why It Took Me 450 Closely Reasoned Pages to Say Something Bleeding Obvious - And What You Can Do To Stop Me Doing It Again
and
b) there will be a whole lot of Sweden in this book, which as you all know will cause a very bad reaction
November 30, 2022
“The role of this book is to point out that greater equality is the material foundation on which better social relations are built”…
I have to give credit to the author! This book is not an easy ready, but not a hard read to its nature. The fact that we overstep boundaries to focus on individualism instead of equality is disturbing. In todays world, it is not so much of an eye opener. The book was written over 10 years ago and it is worse now than before. I’ve learned in history, “the past repeats itself” and I never came to accept that or feel comfortable with a society that is, by definition, “insanity” by nature.
I hope for human sake we come to an epiphany to see things more equally than individual!
We are all human, and just remember, “NO ONE MAKES IT OUT ALIVE!” So let’s live life together and enjoy it with the company of good people, peace and love!
I have to give credit to the author! This book is not an easy ready, but not a hard read to its nature. The fact that we overstep boundaries to focus on individualism instead of equality is disturbing. In todays world, it is not so much of an eye opener. The book was written over 10 years ago and it is worse now than before. I’ve learned in history, “the past repeats itself” and I never came to accept that or feel comfortable with a society that is, by definition, “insanity” by nature.
I hope for human sake we come to an epiphany to see things more equally than individual!
We are all human, and just remember, “NO ONE MAKES IT OUT ALIVE!” So let’s live life together and enjoy it with the company of good people, peace and love!
October 9, 2009
I read this book because John thought I would find it interesting. It was very painful to read for me, because it is one of those books that tries to make an argument but begins by making assumptions and statements that I either don't understand or don't agree with. The book starts by saying "We believe A, B, C, and D" and then building if-then statements to get to their conclusion, Z (which they helpfully provide as a subtitle). Unfortunately, axioms B and C are sketchy and D is just plain wrong, so then I spent the rest of the book gritting my teeth and muttering "disgusting" to myself at some of the more egregious statements.
The book makes the argument that everything wrong with societies can be traced to their level of inequality. They posit that inequality causes everything from obesity to high teen birth rates to crime to basically everything that can be wrong with a society. It's written, as many books of the policy argument genre are, in a style that's designed to preach to the choir. It's designed to provide statistics and examples to those who already buy its thesis. It is similar in this way to books that argue for creationism. If you're skeptical of the thesis, as I was, the book falls apart. As it opens and explains how to read a two-parameter graph, I felt a disquiet. If your audience doesn't understand graphs, so that you have to write a prelude about how to read them, that implies that they won't understand how you can very effectively deceive someone with graphical representation.
I made it through the book by playing the "What are they NOT saying" game. When they make a claim or show a graph or quote a statistic, what are they not including because it doesn't support their case. Nine times out of ten, the unsaid material was on graphs. I don't know how you can write a book about societies in general and have three data points: The US, Japan, and Europe. They make the graphs pretty by breaking Europe into its component states, but really they have about a hundred graphs that are these three data points. Hilariously, even some of their graphs don't support the conclusions they draw. Some of the graphs look like a shotgun target, but they've helpfully drawn a line through the center so that you can draw the right conclusion. This was where I got a good grin. If you've drawn your conclusion at the title of the book, there's no surprises when you look at the data, no matter how scattershot it is.
Anyway, my fundamental criticism is that they claim that unequal societies "do worse" but immediately exclude countries that don't fit their conclusion, leaving the US, Japan and Europe. Again, the comedy comes later in the book when they try to draw conclusions (e.g. in the section on sustainability) and they need more than these three data points, THEN they bring in a bunch of other countries. Why does Qatar show up on those graphs and not the earlier ones? "It's not a rich, developed country" which is defined such that only their three points get counted.
I would summarize the book as deeply flawed. Their conclusion may indeed be correct, but I'm skeptical. They support it very poorly. They don't address evidence that contradicts their conclusion (other countries, the Bush administration, etc). They spend a paragraph explaining that although crime is worse in unequal societies, the fact that crime rates in the US have been dropping steadily since the early 90s doesn't hurt them because (wave hands) it's had an uptick recently. *cough*bullshit.
It's good to read something that I wouldn't choose for myself, but either I'm deeply cynical, too smart to be railroaded into a conclusion, or just closeminded. Take your pick for why I didn't like the book.
EDIT 10/08/09: I thought of a better thesis for this book: More racist societies are always more equal. The Japanese are some of the most racial puritans on the planet, and if you don't see a blonde person in Scandanavia then you aren't in Scandanavia. My point is that racial mixing is a surrogate for diversity, which includes a diversity of backgrounds, which leads to inequality. Thus, the "bad things" in a society could be the result of racial diversity, whereas perhaps the author's ideal equal society would be the racially pure and economically just Nazi Germany.
The book makes the argument that everything wrong with societies can be traced to their level of inequality. They posit that inequality causes everything from obesity to high teen birth rates to crime to basically everything that can be wrong with a society. It's written, as many books of the policy argument genre are, in a style that's designed to preach to the choir. It's designed to provide statistics and examples to those who already buy its thesis. It is similar in this way to books that argue for creationism. If you're skeptical of the thesis, as I was, the book falls apart. As it opens and explains how to read a two-parameter graph, I felt a disquiet. If your audience doesn't understand graphs, so that you have to write a prelude about how to read them, that implies that they won't understand how you can very effectively deceive someone with graphical representation.
I made it through the book by playing the "What are they NOT saying" game. When they make a claim or show a graph or quote a statistic, what are they not including because it doesn't support their case. Nine times out of ten, the unsaid material was on graphs. I don't know how you can write a book about societies in general and have three data points: The US, Japan, and Europe. They make the graphs pretty by breaking Europe into its component states, but really they have about a hundred graphs that are these three data points. Hilariously, even some of their graphs don't support the conclusions they draw. Some of the graphs look like a shotgun target, but they've helpfully drawn a line through the center so that you can draw the right conclusion. This was where I got a good grin. If you've drawn your conclusion at the title of the book, there's no surprises when you look at the data, no matter how scattershot it is.
Anyway, my fundamental criticism is that they claim that unequal societies "do worse" but immediately exclude countries that don't fit their conclusion, leaving the US, Japan and Europe. Again, the comedy comes later in the book when they try to draw conclusions (e.g. in the section on sustainability) and they need more than these three data points, THEN they bring in a bunch of other countries. Why does Qatar show up on those graphs and not the earlier ones? "It's not a rich, developed country" which is defined such that only their three points get counted.
I would summarize the book as deeply flawed. Their conclusion may indeed be correct, but I'm skeptical. They support it very poorly. They don't address evidence that contradicts their conclusion (other countries, the Bush administration, etc). They spend a paragraph explaining that although crime is worse in unequal societies, the fact that crime rates in the US have been dropping steadily since the early 90s doesn't hurt them because (wave hands) it's had an uptick recently. *cough*bullshit.
It's good to read something that I wouldn't choose for myself, but either I'm deeply cynical, too smart to be railroaded into a conclusion, or just closeminded. Take your pick for why I didn't like the book.
EDIT 10/08/09: I thought of a better thesis for this book: More racist societies are always more equal. The Japanese are some of the most racial puritans on the planet, and if you don't see a blonde person in Scandanavia then you aren't in Scandanavia. My point is that racial mixing is a surrogate for diversity, which includes a diversity of backgrounds, which leads to inequality. Thus, the "bad things" in a society could be the result of racial diversity, whereas perhaps the author's ideal equal society would be the racially pure and economically just Nazi Germany.
December 21, 2009
I would have liked the book more if the data sets presented were complete. In numerous graphs the critera is "more equal vs less equal" or "better vs worse" etc. This is not what I would consider rigorous presentation of the data. Additionally, when a graph did have a numerical scale it would not encompass the total bounds of possible values. For example instead of a graph being on a scale from 0% to 100%, it would instead be something like 20 to 60%, showing a much more drastic relationship than exists in reality.
I also feel like the graph data was selected fairly arbitrarily, including only certain countries while leaving out others. In some cases just leaving the US and UK out of the set would imply no or extremely weak correlations to the accompanying point in the text.
While I agree that society should be more equitable, I find that the way the supporting evidence is presented is the wrong way to present this point.
In the end it was okay: 2 stars.
I also feel like the graph data was selected fairly arbitrarily, including only certain countries while leaving out others. In some cases just leaving the US and UK out of the set would imply no or extremely weak correlations to the accompanying point in the text.
While I agree that society should be more equitable, I find that the way the supporting evidence is presented is the wrong way to present this point.
In the end it was okay: 2 stars.
March 2, 2013
Equality is one of those things that is hard to define. This book takes a look at equality from a mostly financial perspective. It also explores the level of equality in opportunities, education and a few other levels.
First of all this book is fabulous. If you are a massive factoid type who loves seeing another way to look at adjoining facts this will be pure pleasure for you. (Please excuse the ridiculousness of some of the graphs that have been dumbed down however).
My only one wish for this work would have been a more comprehensive look at the societies themselves and how their own determinations of the "haves" and "have nots" may play a role in the way that people approach or feel about their quality of life. I think a great majority of this is specific social factors, not only of the LEVEL of the equality but the social environments that tend to garner the expectation of "fairness". Remember when you were a child and you used to say to your dad "but that's just not fair!" and dad would answer with "sorry kid life's just not fair" and that was it? How has this changed over the years? How has our perspective on fairness overall changed? How do different cultures approach the question of what actually is fair and "equal" if you will, and what expectations do we have from government, society, and ourselves? I think there is a lot more to this topic that would be worth exploring.
First of all this book is fabulous. If you are a massive factoid type who loves seeing another way to look at adjoining facts this will be pure pleasure for you. (Please excuse the ridiculousness of some of the graphs that have been dumbed down however).
My only one wish for this work would have been a more comprehensive look at the societies themselves and how their own determinations of the "haves" and "have nots" may play a role in the way that people approach or feel about their quality of life. I think a great majority of this is specific social factors, not only of the LEVEL of the equality but the social environments that tend to garner the expectation of "fairness". Remember when you were a child and you used to say to your dad "but that's just not fair!" and dad would answer with "sorry kid life's just not fair" and that was it? How has this changed over the years? How has our perspective on fairness overall changed? How do different cultures approach the question of what actually is fair and "equal" if you will, and what expectations do we have from government, society, and ourselves? I think there is a lot more to this topic that would be worth exploring.
March 13, 2019
The Piketty of the noughties - i.e. it's a bestselling forest of empirical detail, with lots of methodological problems and ideological overinterpretation. I was very impressed, as an undergrad with the same axe to grind as the authors.
How does it hold up after ten years? Well, we've learned what a forest (or garden) of empirical detail sadly often means: data dredging, cherry-picking, p-hacking and so on.
Here's a meta-analysis contradicting the health thesis, from 2004.
Here's the excellent analyst Nintil contradicting the growth thesis.
Up-to-date critique (from a partisan figure) here.
How does it hold up after ten years? Well, we've learned what a forest (or garden) of empirical detail sadly often means: data dredging, cherry-picking, p-hacking and so on.
Here's a meta-analysis contradicting the health thesis, from 2004.
Here's the excellent analyst Nintil contradicting the growth thesis.
Up-to-date critique (from a partisan figure) here.
September 11, 2011
I'm not wild about the title. I adore the subtitle.
Because "equality" covers it all. Unlike communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, or human rights, "equality" demands the same result for everyone, while appealing to our modern, individualist obsessions with happiness and egoism. I don't know how many cynics will be converted by this book, but I'm convinced it's our best bet.
Because "equality" covers it all. Unlike communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, or human rights, "equality" demands the same result for everyone, while appealing to our modern, individualist obsessions with happiness and egoism. I don't know how many cynics will be converted by this book, but I'm convinced it's our best bet.
September 10, 2013
INEQUALITY CORRODES SOCIETY
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have put the question of inequality under the spotlight in their fine study, "The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone". The focus of their efforts is on the richer nations, essentially those that are in the OECD. They make a strong case for the correlation between the amount of inequality in a country, and the incidence of a number of social problems ranging from teenage pregnancies and drug use, to life expectancy, depression and obesity. Not only that, but they make a case for the fact that people across all income levels in the more equal societies benefit - not just those at the lower income levels.
Wilkinson and Pickett buttress their assertions with a vast array of data. In some cases the correlation between inequality and social problems is very strong, for example between income inequality and rates of imprisonment, in others it is merely pretty strong. There are a few exceptions, but the general case for the link between inequality and a variety of damaging social problems is concluisively made.
Identifying the reason for link between inequality and social problems, disentangling cause and effect, is more problematic. The authors make quite strong cases in some instances, but in others the link is of a more speculative. More studies evidently need to be carried out.
The moral of this story: that inequality is damaging to society seems self-evident, at least to this reader. The novelty in this book is the volume of data accumulated to back the argument, and the number of social issues examined. It puts defenders of the unequal societies we live in, particularly the Anglo-Saxon countries, on the back foot during any discussions of inequality. One can see this vividly expressed if one clicks on the one-star reviews of this book, the paucity of the response is impressive.
On the downside, it was a disappointment that only rich countries were fully investigated, though the volume and quality of data available from these countries is no doubt of a more comprehensive nature. Certainly (from the data at the beginning of the book) the correlation between social indicators and inequality in less developed countries appears just as, if not more, damaging. The ideas that the authors propose for remedying the situation are of a tentative nature, and rightly so. They are presenting the data; it is the responsibility of society at large to debate these issues, and hopefully for the debate to go beyond the platitudes of the professional political class, the constraints imposed by the corporate media, and other vested interests in an unequal society. To this end the authors along with others have formed the Equality Trust, details of which are in the book.
A fine book, which clearly presents arguments and data in a way that should be clear to even the most statistically challenged reader. Other books that examine the links between wealth and social problems that are worth reading include those by Oliver James who has been probing these issues, particularly with regard to mental health, for a number of years (see "Affluenza" and "The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza").
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have put the question of inequality under the spotlight in their fine study, "The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone". The focus of their efforts is on the richer nations, essentially those that are in the OECD. They make a strong case for the correlation between the amount of inequality in a country, and the incidence of a number of social problems ranging from teenage pregnancies and drug use, to life expectancy, depression and obesity. Not only that, but they make a case for the fact that people across all income levels in the more equal societies benefit - not just those at the lower income levels.
Wilkinson and Pickett buttress their assertions with a vast array of data. In some cases the correlation between inequality and social problems is very strong, for example between income inequality and rates of imprisonment, in others it is merely pretty strong. There are a few exceptions, but the general case for the link between inequality and a variety of damaging social problems is concluisively made.
Identifying the reason for link between inequality and social problems, disentangling cause and effect, is more problematic. The authors make quite strong cases in some instances, but in others the link is of a more speculative. More studies evidently need to be carried out.
The moral of this story: that inequality is damaging to society seems self-evident, at least to this reader. The novelty in this book is the volume of data accumulated to back the argument, and the number of social issues examined. It puts defenders of the unequal societies we live in, particularly the Anglo-Saxon countries, on the back foot during any discussions of inequality. One can see this vividly expressed if one clicks on the one-star reviews of this book, the paucity of the response is impressive.
On the downside, it was a disappointment that only rich countries were fully investigated, though the volume and quality of data available from these countries is no doubt of a more comprehensive nature. Certainly (from the data at the beginning of the book) the correlation between social indicators and inequality in less developed countries appears just as, if not more, damaging. The ideas that the authors propose for remedying the situation are of a tentative nature, and rightly so. They are presenting the data; it is the responsibility of society at large to debate these issues, and hopefully for the debate to go beyond the platitudes of the professional political class, the constraints imposed by the corporate media, and other vested interests in an unequal society. To this end the authors along with others have formed the Equality Trust, details of which are in the book.
A fine book, which clearly presents arguments and data in a way that should be clear to even the most statistically challenged reader. Other books that examine the links between wealth and social problems that are worth reading include those by Oliver James who has been probing these issues, particularly with regard to mental health, for a number of years (see "Affluenza" and "The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza").
Read
July 25, 2009This book has two big ideas in one, both of which the authors provide data-driven support for:
1) Improving life in countries where national income per person is greater than $10 - $20K will not come from an increase in income. Which leads to this page 11 excerpt: "We are the first generation to have to find new answers to the question of how we can make further improvements to the real quality of human life. What should we turn to if not economic growth?"
2) The book's answer to its own question above: greater equality. This is the bulk of the book. It makes a detailed case that takes data from several countries and connects inequality with levels of trust, mental health and drug use, physical health, life expectancy, education, teen birth rates, violence, social mobility and incarceration rates. It leads up to this optimism (pg 261): "The relationships between inequality and the prevalence of health and social problems shown in earlier chapters suggest that if the United States was to reduce its income inequality to something like the average of the four most equal of the rich countries (Japan, Norway, Sweden and Finland), the proportion of the population feeling they could trust others might rise by 75 per cent -- presumably with matching improvements in the quality of community life; rates of mental illness and obesity might similarly each be cut by almost two-thirds, teenage birth rates could be more than halved, prison populations might be reduced by 75 per cent, and people could live longer while working the equivalent of two months less per year."
Some ideas about how to do this politically and socially are offered when they break away from the main purpose of the book, to diagnose and support the diagnosis.
I'm not 100% convinced that inequality causes things like low trust levels and so on. But if the data analysis is right, inequality is tightly linked to seemingly very disparate phenomena across grossly dissimilar cultures (Japan, Sweden, US, Singapore, and others). Because the problems studied would appear to be totally unrelated if it weren't for the one thing binding them, inequality, I remain quite receptive to the possibility that inequality causes them. Based on this book, I certainly do not doubt it.
One of the most interesting findings is that inequality hurts everybody in society, not just those at the bottom.
My other criticism is lack of rigor in the graphs. Labeling graph axes with "low" and "high" is unacceptable: there should be a number with its unit of measurement. Where are the r values for the linear fits? I understand that the book is for mass consumption and most people would be put off with too much of this stuff, but the authors could have put it in an appendix, I think.
P.S.: Stats are published on the book's website here.
1) Improving life in countries where national income per person is greater than $10 - $20K will not come from an increase in income. Which leads to this page 11 excerpt: "We are the first generation to have to find new answers to the question of how we can make further improvements to the real quality of human life. What should we turn to if not economic growth?"
2) The book's answer to its own question above: greater equality. This is the bulk of the book. It makes a detailed case that takes data from several countries and connects inequality with levels of trust, mental health and drug use, physical health, life expectancy, education, teen birth rates, violence, social mobility and incarceration rates. It leads up to this optimism (pg 261): "The relationships between inequality and the prevalence of health and social problems shown in earlier chapters suggest that if the United States was to reduce its income inequality to something like the average of the four most equal of the rich countries (Japan, Norway, Sweden and Finland), the proportion of the population feeling they could trust others might rise by 75 per cent -- presumably with matching improvements in the quality of community life; rates of mental illness and obesity might similarly each be cut by almost two-thirds, teenage birth rates could be more than halved, prison populations might be reduced by 75 per cent, and people could live longer while working the equivalent of two months less per year."
Some ideas about how to do this politically and socially are offered when they break away from the main purpose of the book, to diagnose and support the diagnosis.
I'm not 100% convinced that inequality causes things like low trust levels and so on. But if the data analysis is right, inequality is tightly linked to seemingly very disparate phenomena across grossly dissimilar cultures (Japan, Sweden, US, Singapore, and others). Because the problems studied would appear to be totally unrelated if it weren't for the one thing binding them, inequality, I remain quite receptive to the possibility that inequality causes them. Based on this book, I certainly do not doubt it.
One of the most interesting findings is that inequality hurts everybody in society, not just those at the bottom.
My other criticism is lack of rigor in the graphs. Labeling graph axes with "low" and "high" is unacceptable: there should be a number with its unit of measurement. Where are the r values for the linear fits? I understand that the book is for mass consumption and most people would be put off with too much of this stuff, but the authors could have put it in an appendix, I think.
P.S.: Stats are published on the book's website here.
Read
June 8, 2016این کتاب به موضوع بسیار مهمی در ادبیات بین رشته ای(اقتصاد پزشکی،جمعیت شناسی، بهداشت، پزشکی، سیاست و . . .) پرداخته و نگاه جالبی داره . حول اصلی تمام تحلیلها بر محور نابرابری است . می آید توان تبین کنندگی نابرابری را(نه متغییرهای اقتصادی ای مانند درامد سرانه که تحلیل ها بیشتر حول آنهاست)بر روی مسائلی مانند امید به زندگی،گسترش سو مصرف مواد،چاقی،بیماریهای روان و یک سری بیماریهای دیگه،رفتارهای نا به هنجار و جرایم،افت تحصیلی،خشونت،محرومیتها،نا شادیها،ساعات کار طولانی،حجم زندانیها و ... را نشان می دهد و نتیجه میگیرد که این عوامل در کشورها و مناطقی که نابرابری بیشتر است،شیوع بیشتری دارند . تمام ارتباطات را با استناد به آمارها و مطالعات در این زمینه نشان میدهد. کتاب نشان میدهد که گسترش برابری بیشتر از نظر شرایط مادی برای پی ریزی جوامع با روابط اجتماعی بهتر و سالم تر یک اصل ضروری است و جوامعی که دغدغه کاهش این عوامل را دارند باید بر روی کاهش نابرابری پافشاری کنند. . کتاب اگرچه در نوع خودش از جهت پرداختن به دغدغه ها از یک نگاه دیگه بی نظیره اما اگر علاقه به موضوع تو خواننده نباشه زود خسته میشه و فقط میتونه چند صفحه ابتدایی کتاب که ایده اصلی آنجا شکل گرفته و در باقی تنها دنبال اثبات آن است رو بخونه . بقیه کتاب زیر انبوه ارجاع به مطالعات و استفاده از آمارها و اعداد مواظب نباشه گم میشه. من از نگاه کتاب خیلی خوشم اومد و با توجه به اینکه یکی از زمینه های مورد علاقه من نابرابری و عدالت هم است کتاب خوب درگیرم کرد اگرچه جاهایی هم اینقدر مطالب رو تکرار میکرد که آدم رو خسته میکرد.
اگر به ارتباط بین متغییرهای اجتماعی و سلامت با اونطرف قضیه یعنی نابرابریها به خصوص اقتصادی علاقه ندارید کتاب اذیت تان میکنه
پ.ن:
ترجمه عنوان کتاب و تغییر اون هم در نوع خودش جالبه البته میشه ی حدسهایی در مورد چرایی اش زد :)
اگر به ارتباط بین متغییرهای اجتماعی و سلامت با اونطرف قضیه یعنی نابرابریها به خصوص اقتصادی علاقه ندارید کتاب اذیت تان میکنه
پ.ن:
ترجمه عنوان کتاب و تغییر اون هم در نوع خودش جالبه البته میشه ی حدسهایی در مورد چرایی اش زد :)
September 20, 2018
Turns out there’s really good data that inequality hurts everyone. Even the winners.
July 7, 2011
I managed to somehow agree with most of what the book said, while being constantly infuriated by how they presented it. The book gets 3 stars, the ideas in it get 5 stars.
First, the bad. The book is filled with graphs on which one or BOTH axes are labeled low to high, with no numbers. They don't get around to addressing the differences between correlation and causality until two-thirds of the way through the book. They don't include much in the way of policy suggestions or concrete ways to address the problems they discuss, or or the mechanisms by which the effects work.
All of that being said, I do actually believe they collected and displayed a lot of very good data on a very tricky subject. They basically say that many of our disparate social problems (crime rates, teen pregnancy, health care, social isolation, etc) are all highly influenced by the level of inequality between rich and poor within a society. That's a really interesting claim, one that is pretty new and original AFAIK (not being an expert in this field), and has a lot of policy implications. And it's certainly inspiring to think that addressing one issue could help solve many others. Not that it's an easy problem to solve, but it's tractable.
This book has garnered some serious reviews, and it's enemies (The Spirit Level Delusion by Snowdon) make me take it even more seriously. Now the question is how to get policy and society to move in the direction this book recommends. I'm still thinking about that part.
First, the bad. The book is filled with graphs on which one or BOTH axes are labeled low to high, with no numbers. They don't get around to addressing the differences between correlation and causality until two-thirds of the way through the book. They don't include much in the way of policy suggestions or concrete ways to address the problems they discuss, or or the mechanisms by which the effects work.
All of that being said, I do actually believe they collected and displayed a lot of very good data on a very tricky subject. They basically say that many of our disparate social problems (crime rates, teen pregnancy, health care, social isolation, etc) are all highly influenced by the level of inequality between rich and poor within a society. That's a really interesting claim, one that is pretty new and original AFAIK (not being an expert in this field), and has a lot of policy implications. And it's certainly inspiring to think that addressing one issue could help solve many others. Not that it's an easy problem to solve, but it's tractable.
This book has garnered some serious reviews, and it's enemies (The Spirit Level Delusion by Snowdon) make me take it even more seriously. Now the question is how to get policy and society to move in the direction this book recommends. I'm still thinking about that part.
October 17, 2018
Oerhört bra med väl underbyggda argument och stöd i forskning om varför jämlikhet är bra för alla! Om alla läste den här boken skulle ingen rösta borgerligt.
Minus: Den är från 2009 så lite gammal, bitvis skum översättning, bedrövliga seriestrippar.
Minus: Den är från 2009 så lite gammal, bitvis skum översättning, bedrövliga seriestrippar.
August 17, 2020
First of all, let me make it abundantly clear that I agree wholeheartedly with the hypothesis that inequality contributes to many social ills. This is an important piece of work and I'm on board with making society a more equal place!
Although the thesis has merit, it was an absolute slog to read. I found the writing unengaging, repetitive and (particularly in the interpretation) drenched in bias.
The trouble is, the authors seem to pursue their conclusions with such a dogged determination, that they don't seem to notice when they are contradicting themselves or overinterpreting.
Several times I found myself frowning and saying to myself "But... a few chapters ago you said the opposite..." or "But... that's not a watertight argument..." and once or twice "that makes ZERO sense AT ALL!"
So although there is a lot of good here, the book is let down by dull commentary, confident assertion of uncertainties and solutions that are a little too authoritarian-seeming for me to fully endorse.
Although the thesis has merit, it was an absolute slog to read. I found the writing unengaging, repetitive and (particularly in the interpretation) drenched in bias.
The trouble is, the authors seem to pursue their conclusions with such a dogged determination, that they don't seem to notice when they are contradicting themselves or overinterpreting.
Several times I found myself frowning and saying to myself "But... a few chapters ago you said the opposite..." or "But... that's not a watertight argument..." and once or twice "that makes ZERO sense AT ALL!"
So although there is a lot of good here, the book is let down by dull commentary, confident assertion of uncertainties and solutions that are a little too authoritarian-seeming for me to fully endorse.
July 26, 2020
3.5 rounded up
5 stars for the idea, but it’s inevitable that a book like this doesn’t make for the most exciting read and is by its very nature quite repetitive. Lots of graphs (which I appreciated) and a hell of a lot of examples, but each chapter - unsurprisingly - has the same message. This isn’t a criticism per se, just an advisory that this is best read over a longer period, perhaps a chapter at a time.
It’s clear that a hell of a lot of research has gone into this and I just hope it falls into the hands of those who have the power to initiate some degree of change, but this is still one I’d recommend to all.
5 stars for the idea, but it’s inevitable that a book like this doesn’t make for the most exciting read and is by its very nature quite repetitive. Lots of graphs (which I appreciated) and a hell of a lot of examples, but each chapter - unsurprisingly - has the same message. This isn’t a criticism per se, just an advisory that this is best read over a longer period, perhaps a chapter at a time.
It’s clear that a hell of a lot of research has gone into this and I just hope it falls into the hands of those who have the power to initiate some degree of change, but this is still one I’d recommend to all.
January 25, 2020
Singolare avventura intellettuale di due medici: partiti per un'indagine di tipo scientifico comparato tra le principali nazioni, scoprono sorprendenti correlazioni tra alcune malattie sociali e la sperequazione dei redditi.
Il PIL, la spesa medica e la stessa ricerca hanno un impatto più trascurabile, anche sulla stessa durata media della vita.
Affermazioni ben supportate da solide basi scientifiche e quasi sempre convincenti.
Alla fine, ne viene fuori uno straordinario saggio di scienza economica.
Da leggere per tutti, progressisti e conservatori.
Il PIL, la spesa medica e la stessa ricerca hanno un impatto più trascurabile, anche sulla stessa durata media della vita.
Affermazioni ben supportate da solide basi scientifiche e quasi sempre convincenti.
Alla fine, ne viene fuori uno straordinario saggio di scienza economica.
Da leggere per tutti, progressisti e conservatori.
June 5, 2023
Fantastic, easy read. Proves with data what most of us instinctively feel: that income inequality makes us all more unhealthy, sad, anxious, ignorant, violent and less trusting while it also stands in the way of meaningful climate change response.
August 7, 2018
I am five years behind the curve in reading this book. I’ve put it off because I don’t need convincing of its thesis; I already thought that more unequal societies were worse. Still, it’s well known and much-cited, so I’ve finally got round to it. Needless to say, I found its arguments convincing and was impressed with the range of evidence marshalled. As always with such books, accessibility has resulted some slight sacrifice in academic rigour - I would have liked to see some p-values for the regressions. They could have stuck them in the notes & references for social science nerds like me. I also wondered at all the strictly linear correlations - no polynomials? These are mere nitpicks, though.
I was initially surprised and slightly baffled by the book’s claims to be apolitical and evidence-based, whilst presenting a very strong argument against capitalism in general and neoliberal capitalism in particular. You can protest neutral objectivity all you like, but in social science there is absolutely no such thing. This is a political book and there is no point in denying it. In chapter 13, the writers comment on alternative explanations to income inequality for their findings. One of them is neoliberalism, which is dismissed because although it may well have caused increases in inequality, it did not intend to! I found this astonishing. Income inequality probably didn’t intend to cause worse health, education, and crime outcomes either. The key point here is that it’s incredibly naive to assume that evidence of negative implications is sufficient to get neoliberal policies changed. Such a view ignores power relations, institutional structures, and the nature of neoliberalism as an ideology. Neoliberalism sees high levels of inequality as an inevitable and acceptable part of economic activity.
This professed apolitical stance is then tossed aside in the final two chapters, the former of which deals with climate change. It includes a graph I’ve seen before, comparing Human Development Index (HDI, which measures Gross National Product, life expectancy, and education levels) scores with ecological footprint per capita. One country in the world manages to reach the threshold of ‘high’ HDI whilst remaining within the average world biocapacity. Guess which one! It’s Cuba, which has been governed by a Communist dictatorship since 1965. Infant mortality rates and life expectancy there are almost identical to those of the USA. This fact causes me a certain morbid amusement. Costa Rica also does well for good reasons.
The climate change chapter was serviceable overall but inevitably superficial. The final chapter, titled 'Building the Future', was the most interesting to me. It faced up to the difficulties of creating more equal societies, noted that various policy approaches exist, and suggests some specific examples. I was pleased by the admissions that economic growth is a substitute for equality and that a steady-state economy is key to tackling climate change. The discussion of employee-owned firms was interesting, however it is unclear to me how massive multinational corporations could ever transition to such a model. As the writers concede, the ‘basic amorality of the market’ is a critical stumbling block to reducing consumerism, protecting the environment, and prioritising equality over economic growth. I also couldn’t help noting a certain contradiction in the commentary on rich countries that are already relatively equal, such as Sweden and Japan. In each case, the political impetus for pursuing equality was some sort of massive upheaval; in several cases, a world war. Despite this, the writers state hopefully that a transformative reorientation towards equality can be achieved incrementally, without revolution. I wish this was the case but find it hard to believe, especially considering the scale of change needed to reduce carbon emissions.
I am being critical of this book, but not because I didn’t like it or don’t agree with what it’s saying. It’s because I wish there was a simple answer to the acute and entrenched problems of inequality and climate change. There isn’t and a plausible complex answer hasn’t yet emerged either. (If it has, let me know ASAP!) ‘The Spirit Level’ is an excellent introduction and very useful contribution to the debate, though. I think it is a lot more anti-capitalist than it dares to admit. Presumably this is elided in order not to cause undue alarm. I was pleasantly surprised by the importance placed on climate change and the eventual recognition of vested interests as a serious barrier to change. Sadly, I can’t help feeling that since 2009 equality has receded further. In the UK, certainly, the Coalition government has worsened the situation - here’s a paper on that. ‘The Spirit Level’ is well worth reading, I just wish it had left me in a more optimistic frame of mind.
I was initially surprised and slightly baffled by the book’s claims to be apolitical and evidence-based, whilst presenting a very strong argument against capitalism in general and neoliberal capitalism in particular. You can protest neutral objectivity all you like, but in social science there is absolutely no such thing. This is a political book and there is no point in denying it. In chapter 13, the writers comment on alternative explanations to income inequality for their findings. One of them is neoliberalism, which is dismissed because although it may well have caused increases in inequality, it did not intend to! I found this astonishing. Income inequality probably didn’t intend to cause worse health, education, and crime outcomes either. The key point here is that it’s incredibly naive to assume that evidence of negative implications is sufficient to get neoliberal policies changed. Such a view ignores power relations, institutional structures, and the nature of neoliberalism as an ideology. Neoliberalism sees high levels of inequality as an inevitable and acceptable part of economic activity.
This professed apolitical stance is then tossed aside in the final two chapters, the former of which deals with climate change. It includes a graph I’ve seen before, comparing Human Development Index (HDI, which measures Gross National Product, life expectancy, and education levels) scores with ecological footprint per capita. One country in the world manages to reach the threshold of ‘high’ HDI whilst remaining within the average world biocapacity. Guess which one! It’s Cuba, which has been governed by a Communist dictatorship since 1965. Infant mortality rates and life expectancy there are almost identical to those of the USA. This fact causes me a certain morbid amusement. Costa Rica also does well for good reasons.
The climate change chapter was serviceable overall but inevitably superficial. The final chapter, titled 'Building the Future', was the most interesting to me. It faced up to the difficulties of creating more equal societies, noted that various policy approaches exist, and suggests some specific examples. I was pleased by the admissions that economic growth is a substitute for equality and that a steady-state economy is key to tackling climate change. The discussion of employee-owned firms was interesting, however it is unclear to me how massive multinational corporations could ever transition to such a model. As the writers concede, the ‘basic amorality of the market’ is a critical stumbling block to reducing consumerism, protecting the environment, and prioritising equality over economic growth. I also couldn’t help noting a certain contradiction in the commentary on rich countries that are already relatively equal, such as Sweden and Japan. In each case, the political impetus for pursuing equality was some sort of massive upheaval; in several cases, a world war. Despite this, the writers state hopefully that a transformative reorientation towards equality can be achieved incrementally, without revolution. I wish this was the case but find it hard to believe, especially considering the scale of change needed to reduce carbon emissions.
I am being critical of this book, but not because I didn’t like it or don’t agree with what it’s saying. It’s because I wish there was a simple answer to the acute and entrenched problems of inequality and climate change. There isn’t and a plausible complex answer hasn’t yet emerged either. (If it has, let me know ASAP!) ‘The Spirit Level’ is an excellent introduction and very useful contribution to the debate, though. I think it is a lot more anti-capitalist than it dares to admit. Presumably this is elided in order not to cause undue alarm. I was pleasantly surprised by the importance placed on climate change and the eventual recognition of vested interests as a serious barrier to change. Sadly, I can’t help feeling that since 2009 equality has receded further. In the UK, certainly, the Coalition government has worsened the situation - here’s a paper on that. ‘The Spirit Level’ is well worth reading, I just wish it had left me in a more optimistic frame of mind.
April 5, 2010
I wanted to be able to give this book 5 stars simply because I believe that it is morally right for societies to have a small gap between rich and poor (and morally reprehensible that some of the most advanced nations, like the USA, have huge gaps between the haves and the have nots). All people have the right to the basic necessities of life -- in our modern societies that includes things like clean water to drink, fresh air to breathe, a high likelihood of survival into late adulthood, access to and an appreciation for quality education, the availability of healthy and fresh food, and adequate health care (especially preventative care with a regular doctor). While I believe that Pickett and Wilkinson, the epidemiologists who authored this book, have their facts correct and their hearts in the right place, this book simply preaches to the converted. Their own academic papers, and the ones they cite in this book, appear to be statistically rigorous, but this book is not. None of their graphs with best-fit lines have regression analyses, and many of the statistics they cite in the text lack any sort of significance tests. Perhaps they tried to keep things simple for the average reader; unfortunately, they over-simplified their arguments and thus failed to concisely or convincingly explain just why it is that societies whose citizens are more equal (have less disparate levels of monetary wealth) are more likely to have citizens who are live longer, healthier lives. In addition, the prose is often repetitive, that at times veers towards the condescending.
If it weren't for the last third of the book, which prompted me to think about what I can do to promote a more equal society -- how can I curtail conspicuous consumerism, why do I believe so strongly in the redistribution of wealth, who are the people that have the most power to change our society -- I would have given this book 2 stars. So, while I endorse the idea that societies with smaller differences between the rich and poor are better, I cannot recommend this book to those friends of mine who aren’t such ardent supporters of income redistribution. I can however, recommend that interested parties (and even those who don’t know if they are interested) visit the authors’ website: http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/ where they can learn the gist of the Spirit Level argument, view a PowerPoint summary of their research, and even join discussions and forums with those of us who are committed to alleviating the disparities between rich and poor.
If it weren't for the last third of the book, which prompted me to think about what I can do to promote a more equal society -- how can I curtail conspicuous consumerism, why do I believe so strongly in the redistribution of wealth, who are the people that have the most power to change our society -- I would have given this book 2 stars. So, while I endorse the idea that societies with smaller differences between the rich and poor are better, I cannot recommend this book to those friends of mine who aren’t such ardent supporters of income redistribution. I can however, recommend that interested parties (and even those who don’t know if they are interested) visit the authors’ website: http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/ where they can learn the gist of the Spirit Level argument, view a PowerPoint summary of their research, and even join discussions and forums with those of us who are committed to alleviating the disparities between rich and poor.
March 3, 2020
หนังสือที่เริ่มต้นจากการศึกษาผลกระทบของ”ความเหลื่อมล้ำ”ทางรายได้ของประชากรของประเทศหนึ่งต่อ ดัชนีชี้วัดสุขภาพของสังคมด้านต่างๆ เช่น อายุขัยเฉลี่ยของพลเมือง ปัญหาการใช้ความรุนแรงในสังคม อัตราส่วนผู้เข้ารับการรักษาด้านจิตตเวช BMIของประชากร ผลสัมฤทธิ์ด้านการศึกษาของเยาวชน อัตราส่วน��องแม่วัยใส ฯลฯ ในประเทศนั้นๆ ตามมุมมองของนักระบาดวิทยา
หน้งสือพาเราไปพบผลลัพธ์เชิงประจักษ์ที่ความเหลื่อมล้ำกระทำต่อสังคม และผลกระทบด้านนั้นๆต่อสมาชิกในลำดับขั้นต่างๆของสังคม แล้วให้คำอธิบายเกี่ยวกับสาเหตุที่อาจทำให้เป็นเช่นนั้น
เล่มนี้เป็นหนังสือที่เราอยากแนะนำให้ทุกคนได้อ่านนะ แต่มันอ่านติดยากน่ะ ยิ่งบทแรกๆด้วยแล้วยิ่งต้องใช้ความพยายามในการอ่านมากจริงๆ (ไม่งั้นคงต้องเลิกอ่านไปแล้ว)
หน้งสือพาเราไปพบผลลัพธ์เชิงประจักษ์ที่ความเหลื่อมล้ำกระทำต่อสังคม และผลกระทบด้านนั้นๆต่อสมาชิกในลำดับขั้นต่างๆของสังคม แล้วให้คำอธิบายเกี่ยวกับสาเหตุที่อาจทำให้เป็นเช่นนั้น
เล่มนี้เป็นหนังสือที่เราอยากแนะนำให้ทุกคนได้อ่านนะ แต่มันอ่านติดยากน่ะ ยิ่งบทแรกๆด้วยแล้วยิ่งต้องใช้ความพยายามในการอ่านมากจริงๆ (ไม่งั้นคงต้องเลิกอ่านไปแล้ว)
January 17, 2020
I had a lot of trouble maintaining interest in reading this book. First, the premise seemed obvious to me, so much so that maybe it could have been handled in a magazine article. Second, it was filled with statistics and cites, much like a high school research paper, on and on and on. After about a third of the book, I gave up. There were a few interesting assertions, but sometimes their conclusions seemed to be a little thin. And there are lots of other books I'd like to read.
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