Name: The Spirit Level
ISBN: 9781608193417

Richard Wilkinson

Kate Pickett

It is common knowledge that, in rich societies, the poor have worse health and suffer more from almost every social problem. This book explains why inequality is the most serious problem societies face today.

Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

The Spirit Level

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 - That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off - How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future 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.

Why Equality is Better for Everyone

Gavin

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.

Arianna M

To summarise: income inequality is at the root of all social problems you can think of, demonstrated with facts, data, graphs. Many kinds of inequality often intersect (income, gender, ethnical, and so on). Neo-liberal policies widened income differences. Shared ownership and management of companies (cough, the means of production) and taxing the rich would solve these problems.

Oh, if only somebody had thought of how economic inequality is tied to social inequality… and maybe wrote and published theory demonstrating this… if only somebody had thought of this in, say, the nineteenth century……………………………

Three stars because it's quick and easy to read and the research is valuable, but good god… the elephant in the room… favourite quote: “Rather than adopting an attitude of gratitude towards the rich, we need to recognize what a damaging effect they have on the social fabric.” we do. we do recognise it i promise you!!!!

The Spirit Level Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

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