Ill Fares the Land Read Free Page A

scale.
    The consequences are clear. There has been a collapse in intergenerational mobility: in contrast to their parents and grandparents, children today in the UK as in the US have very little expectation of improving upon the condition into which they were born. The poor stay poor. Economic disadvantage for the overwhelming majority translates into ill health, missed educational opportunity and—increasingly—the familiar symptoms of depression: alcoholism, obesity, gambling and minor criminality. The unemployed or underemployed lose such skills as they have acquired and become chronically superfluous to the economy. Anxiety and stress, not to mention illness and early death, frequently follow.

    Social Mobility and Inequality.
    (From Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level , Figure 12.1, p. 160)
    Income disparity exacerbates the problems. Thus the incidence of mental illness correlates closely to income in the US and the UK, whereas the two indices are quite unrelated in all continental European countries. Even trust, the faith we have in our fellow citizens, corresponds negatively with differences in income: between 1983 and 2001, mistrustfulness increased markedly in the US, the UK and Ireland—three countries in which the dogma of unregulated individual self-interest was most assiduously applied to public policy. In no other country was a comparable increase in mutual mistrust to be found.

    Social Mobility in the USA.
    (From Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level , Figure 12.2, p. 161)
    Even within individual countries, inequality plays a crucial role in shaping peoples’ lives. In the United States, for example, your chances of living a long and healthy life closely track your income: residents of wealthy districts can expect to live longer and better. Young women in poorer states of the US are more likely to become pregnant in their teenage years—and their babies are less likely to survive—than their peers in wealthier states. In the same way, a child from a disfavored district has a higher chance of dropping out of high school than if his parents have a steady mid-range income and live in a prosperous part of the country. As for the children of the poor who remain in school: they will do worse, achieve lower scores and obtain less fulfilling and lower paid employment.

    Trust and Belonging in Europe.
    (From Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet [London: Earthscan, 2009], Figure 9.1, p. 145)
    Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly corresponds to pathological social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause. There is a reason why infant mortality, life expectancy, criminality, the prison population, mental illness, unemployment, obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, illegal drug use, economic insecurity, personal indebtedness and anxiety are so much more marked in the US and the UK than they are in continental Europe.
    The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is. Thus Sweden, or Finland, two of the world’s wealthiest countries by per capita income or GDP, have a very narrow gap separating their richest from their poorest citizens—and they consistently lead the world in indices of measurable wellbeing. Conversely, the United States, despite its huge aggregate wealth, always comes low on such measures. We spend vast sums on healthcare, but life expectancy in the US remains below Bosnia and just above Albania.

    Inequality and Ill Health
    (From Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth, Figure 9.2, p. 155)

    Inequality and Crime.
    (From Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level , Figure 10.2, p. 135)

    Inequality and Mental Illness.
    (From Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level , Figure 5.1, p. 67)

    Health Expenditure and Life