An important study has been published online by the Equality Trust in England, which shows that the greater the disparity between wealthy and poor, the greater the health and social problems.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have written a book which explains this study in detail (with a mouthful of a title): The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. It can be purchased online at Amazon UK, Amazon US, Canada, as well as independent booksellers, such as one of my favourites, Elliot Bay in Seattle.*
Great inequality is the scourge of modern societies. We provide the evidence on each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage births, and child well-being. For all eleven of these health and social problems, outcomes are very substantially worse in more unequal societies.
We have checked the relationships wherever possible in two independent test beds: internationally among the rich countries, and then again among the 50 states of the USA. In almost every case we find the same tendency for outcomes to be much worse in more unequal societies in both settings.
Recently (Dec.27 09) on CBC Radio’s flagship program the Sunday Edition, hosted by Michael Enright, a segment on inequality featured Kate Pickett. I was going to paste their description of this segment, but it was so poorly written I hesitate to expose you to their grammer, and will instead paraphrase: during the current season, Sunday Edition will explore the dilemna of poverty: how it is defined and measured, and what we can do about it. As wealth is concentrated in fewer people, the ones left behind suffer, and the nation must deal with an increase in social ills caused by the gap between rich and poor.
The Equality Trust has made available a PowerPoint slide show with 35 of the graphs featured online and in the book (link redirects to download page).






