The suggestion that the effects we attribute to inequality might instead result if more unequal societies had more poor people can, I think, be discounted for two reasons. First the relationships between inequality and health have - in other analyses - been controlled for poverty and have also stood up to the use of multilevel models in which inequality has been controlled for all individual incomes. Additionally, we show there is no relation between national income per head and life expectancy in rich countries suggesting absolute material standards are no longer key. Second, the health and social effects of inequality are too big and go too far up the social ladder to be attributed to the poor.
It is very important to make this point forcefully and carefully. Maybe it isn’t clear in the book.
The health effects of inequality has to be analyzed for each income level separately, and for a given income level, it has to be shown that health in unequal societies is worse than health in equal societies. For example, inequality may have a stronger impact on the poor living in unequal societies, than the poor living in equal societies, but it may not have any effect on the rich living in different societies, or it may even improve the well being of rich living in unequal societies. There is some evidence in behavioral economics that relative wealth is more important than absolute wealth. Professor Wilkinson is suggesting that other people have done this work, but this should be the primary concern in this research, and explained carefully and in great detail.
See “The Spirit Level Delusion” by Christopher Snowdon. Interesting that TSL doesn’t get a single mention in Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. Few epidemiologists now give any weight to W&P’s flawed data in TSL.
COMMENTS
BY Richard Wilkinson
ON February 28, 2010 03:04 AM
The suggestion that the effects we attribute to inequality might instead result if more unequal societies had more poor people can, I think, be discounted for two reasons. First the relationships between inequality and health have - in other analyses - been controlled for poverty and have also stood up to the use of multilevel models in which inequality has been controlled for all individual incomes. Additionally, we show there is no relation between national income per head and life expectancy in rich countries suggesting absolute material standards are no longer key. Second, the health and social effects of inequality are too big and go too far up the social ladder to be attributed to the poor.
BY Vince Orman
ON June 25, 2010 08:05 AM
It is very important to make this point forcefully and carefully. Maybe it isn’t clear in the book.
The health effects of inequality has to be analyzed for each income level separately, and for a given income level, it has to be shown that health in unequal societies is worse than health in equal societies. For example, inequality may have a stronger impact on the poor living in unequal societies, than the poor living in equal societies, but it may not have any effect on the rich living in different societies, or it may even improve the well being of rich living in unequal societies. There is some evidence in behavioral economics that relative wealth is more important than absolute wealth. Professor Wilkinson is suggesting that other people have done this work, but this should be the primary concern in this research, and explained carefully and in great detail.
BY Graham White
ON January 29, 2015 09:55 PM
See “The Spirit Level Delusion” by Christopher Snowdon. Interesting that TSL doesn’t get a single mention in Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. Few epidemiologists now give any weight to W&P’s flawed data in TSL.