The Spirit Level - Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett - Part 4

The Spirit Level - Richard Wilkinson
and Kate Pickett

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 54

 February 23, 2017 

Book 16 - The Spirit Level:
Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2010)
 Part 4 -157-214
Reading Time - 1 hour

As you might suspect, social mobility in inequal societies is much lower than in societies with better income equality. Education is one of the main drivers of social mobility and given that inequal societies tend to have poor educational performance, it's not surprising. In general, the middle and upper classes tend to discriminate against the lower classes. Given that social mobility is a hallmark of democracies, one is left wondering how a country like the USA could have a decreasing rate of social mobility? Although the authors don't really touch on the role of the military in this study... they do admit that:
in more unequal societies, more people are oriented towards dominance while in more egalitarian societies, more people are oriented towards inclusiveness and empathy.

Sooo... having looked at some of those key areas, we now know that countries like Japan and those in Scandinavia are much more healthy, while countries like the USA, UK and Portugal are more unhealthy. At least for the developed countries. Canada is in the middle of the pack. Given that there are countries like Japan which function quite well, we'd do well to perhaps examine their methods and see if we could incorporate some of their techniques. Because the vast majority of the population is harmed by greater inequality, not just the poor. One way to redistribute the wealth is by tinkering with gross income. The other way is through taxes and benefits.

Ultimately, we are looking at two ways of living in a society. One society is based in dominance hierarchies which are all about self-advancement and status competition. The other society is based on mutual interdependence and cooperation. I know which one I'd rather live in!