Tag Richard Wilkinson

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A broken society, yes. But broken by Thatcher

Feb 1, ’10 12:49 PM

Richard Wilkin­son and Kate Pick­ett writ­ing for The Guard­ian:

The evid­ence shows that almost all the prob­lems that occur most often in the poorest neigh­bour­hoods — includ­ing those that make us a broken soci­ety — are sys­tem­at­ic­ally more com­mon in more unequal soci­et­ies. Rates are not just a little higher, but between two and eight times higher. Wider income gaps make soci­et­ies socially dys­func­tional across the board.

Last Octo­ber Cameron roun­ded on Labour, say­ing: “Who made inequal­ity greater? No, not the wicked Tor­ies. You, Labour. You’re the ones that did this to our soci­ety. So don’t you dare lec­ture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the mod­ern Con­ser­vat­ive party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down.”

But the truth is that we are suf­fer­ing the impact of the massive increases in income inequal­ity under Thatcher, which Blair and Brown have since failed to reverse. In the 1980s the gulf between the top and bot­tom 20% widened by a full 60% — much the most dra­matic widen­ing of income dif­fer­ences on record.

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Why more equal societies always do better

Mar 15, ’09 9:00 PM

It’s been a long time com­ing but two people, Richard Wilkin­son and Kate Pick­ett, have finally put the num­bers together and con­clus­ively shown that mod­ern social prob­lems are sub­stan­tially worse in those soci­et­ies with wider gaps between rich and poor.

Any curs­ory look at the world tells you this but these are the first people to show it sci­en­tific­ally. This, I would sug­gest, is going to be huge. The implic­a­tions are profound.

Will Hut­ton, writ­ing for The Guard­ian:

Income inequal­ity, they show bey­ond any doubt, is not just bad for those at the bot­tom but for every­one. More unequal soci­et­ies are socially dys­func­tional across the board. There is more teen­age preg­nancy, men­tal ill­ness, higher prison pop­u­la­tions, more murders, higher obesity and less numer­acy and lit­er­acy in more unequal soci­et­ies. Even the rich report more men­tal ill health and have lower life expect­an­cies than their peers in less unequal societies.

They have pro­duced a book on their find­ings called The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Soci­et­ies Almost Always Do Bet­ter. And they’ve also cre­ated web­site, equalitytrust.org, to make the evid­ence they set out bet­ter known.

As John Carey points out in his review of their book in the Times: “It might be said that The Spirit Level merely for­mu­lates what every­one has always felt.”

Now maybe we can get on with chan­ging a few things around here.

External links:

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