Here's an interesting perspective on income inequality -- whether you're rich or poor doesn't matter as much as the gap between you and others.
Richard Wilkinson, an expert in public health, has charted the hard data on economic inequality. He found that a host of ills flow from inequality -- from mental illness and life expectancies to levels of social trust and the well-being of children.
Again, he's not simply saying that being poor results in lower life expectancies. That would be a definite "Duh?" He's saying that in a society with gross income inequality the poorer suffer from a range of social ills. And to guard against accusations that he's cherry-picking data to fit his thesis, he arrayed an internationally accepted standard of child well-being against measures of income inequality.
By the way, he gets the same results when he looks at individual states in the U.S. Measures of social health are worse for people who live in states with high income inequality than in states with less.
The charts above illustrate his point, but to get the full flavor of his thesis, watch the YouTube video of his talk at the TED conference. Or better yet, buy his book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.
A friend tells me that you could ascribe practically any cause to the Occupy Wall Street people. Maybe so. But income inequality has to be at the top of their list of gripes. Wilkinson's data helps explain why they may be right.
Comments