The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

by Richard G. Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

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Wilkinson, Richard G. and Pickett, Kate. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. New York: Bloomsbury 2009.  331 pp.  26 pp. refs.   $28.00

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett bring us an absolutely fascinating survey of sociological research that confirms their hypothesis that when there is greater social equality in a society, the people in those societies are healthier and happier. Their discussion is drawn from numerous research reports that very consistently confirm their thesis. While one might expect such materials to be dry and boring, this could not be further from the case. The authors start by documenting that despite the fact that many countries in  
the world today are richer in technological and intellectual developments, they appear to be less well off when it comes to assessments of happiness with their lives.

It is a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement, we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume and with little or no community life. Lacking the relaxed social contact and emotional satisfaction we all need, we seek comfort in over-eating, obsessive shipping and spending, or become prey to excessive alcohol, psychoactive medicines and illegal drugs.

How is it that what we have creates so much mental and emotional suffering despite levels of wealth and comfort unprecedented in human history? Often what we feel is missing is little more than time enjoying the company of friends, yet even that can seem beyond us. We talk as if our lives were a constant battle for psychological survival, struggling against stress and emotional exhaustion, but the truth is that the luxury and extravagance of our lives is so great that it threatens the planet. (p. 3)

Physical and mental health are likewise not correlated with wealth. While increasing affluence initially enables people to be more healthy, after a point of modest improvements in people's conditions, to become richer as a nation does not automatically confer greater overall health to the average person in that nation. What happens is that there is a greater survival of children with the initial affluence, but then diseases develop in later life – in large measure related to people's lifestyles.

Masses of evidence support these observations. For instance, citing a review of 269 studies of anxiety in the US from 1952 to 1993, the authors note that "Together the surveys covered over 52,000 individuals. What they showed was a continuous upward trend throughout this forty-year period…by the late 1980s the average American child was more anxious than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. (p. 33)

These differences have not been generally apparent to most of those who have sought to improve people's quality of life.

What is striking in Wilkinson and Pickett's analysis is that it is not the absolute wealth of a nation that determines the levels of physical and mental health and happiness of its population. It is the distribution of wealth among its citizens. Where there is greater equality (or viewed from the opposite perspective, less disparity) in wealth in a nation, there is greater health and happiness.

The powerful mechanisms which make people sensitive to inequality cannot be understood in terms either of social structure or of individual psychology alone. Individual psychology and societal inequality relate to each other like lock and key. One reason why the effects of inequality have not been properly understood before is because of a failure to understand the relationship between them. (p. 33)

One might expect that the rich who are far richer than the poor in their own countries would be healthier and happier than the poor in the same countries, and that the greater the disparity in wealth the more true this should be. The opposite is in fact the case. The rich in those countries with greater disparity in wealth are also less happy and less healthy. These differences are also unrelated to material living standards or to governmental budgets for social services.

Because these findings are consistent within a series of 200 studies, confirming the value of greater social equality as a factor in promoting health and happiness, the authors then ask whether any causal mechanisms can be identified to account for these findings. " The search for a mechanism led to the discovery that social relationships (as measured by social cohesion, trust, involvement in community life and low levels of violence) are better in more equal societies." (p. 192)

The implications of these findings are far-reaching. If and when there is a better appreciation of the fact that earning more money is not going to guarantee greater health and happiness, then many of the factors that are driving our global community to increase consumption of natural resources to the point of devastating the environment may be reduced or eliminated. Quoting Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell University, the authors note:

Henry Wallich, a former governor of the Federal Reserve and professor of economics at Yale, said: ‘Growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable. But this relation holds both ways round. It is not simply that growth is a substitute for equality, it is that greater equality makes growth much less necessary. It is a precondition for a steady-state economy.

A great deal of what drives consumption is status competition. For most of us it probably feels less like being competitive and more like a kind of defensiveness: if we don’t raise our standards, we get left behind and everything starts to look dowdy, shabby and out of date., has described how standards are inherently relative and involve comparisons with others. In his book, Falling Behind: How rising inequality harms the middle class (2007). (p. 221-2)

The consumption of the rich reduces everyone else’s satisfaction with what they have, by showing it up as inferior – as less than the best. In his book, Happiness, Richard Layard, founder of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, treated this dissatisfaction as a cost which the rich impose on the rest of society. Rather as if it were smoke from a factory chimney, he estimated the cost that the rich should pay for it. (p. 222)

Pointed quotes highlight the fact that the authors' observations are not new, but have been the subject of comments by noted historical figures in many parts of the world, over many centuries.

I care for riches – to make gifts to friends, or lead a sick man back to health with ease and plenty. Else small aid is wealth for daily gladness; once a man be done with hunger, rich and poor are all as one.
                    - Euripides, Electra  (p. 3)

A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ.
                    -John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
                    -Krishnamurti

This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with wholistic planetary health and healing.

Review by Daniel Benor, MD, ABIHM
Editor-in-Chief, IJHC

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