The Spirit Level

While citizens of developed countries enjoy unprecedented material wealth and convenience, many struggle with unbridled consumerism, anxiety, depression, and social detachment. The authors argue that this malaise contributes to unhealthy, comfort-seeking behaviors, such as overeating and addictions. The authors interpret these trends as symptomatic of “social failure” (3). Pickett and Wilkinson contend that mainstream political narratives encourage voters to consider their individual needs and status within society and have failed to paint a picture of a better society in general or a plan to achieve it. The authors argue that this “social failure” in materially rich countries is a sign that governments must prioritize the psychological well-being of people at every level of their society (3).

The authors argue that the evidence they will present proves that “the quality of social relations in a society is built on material foundations,” because people’s status informs how they relate to each other (4).

Statistics show that as countries develop, their population’s material standard of living improves, and people’s happiness and health predictably increase. However, over time, these improvements level off as countries become wealthier. The authors conclude that in poorer countries, economic developments are crucial for health improvements. Conversely, in rich countries, economic gains make little difference to a population’s measurable physical and mental health.

The authors explain that within societies, wealthier people always have lower death rates than the poorer people in their country. However, when researchers compared life expectancies among people from developed countries, they found that average total income was not a predictor of lifespan. The scientists point to two possible explanations for this. First, a person’s societal status may be a better health predictor than income (13). Alternatively, healthier people may be more socially mobile, which could also account for why they reach the top income tiers.

In this chapter, the authors investigate if the degree of income inequality within a society informs its social and health problems. They provide a chart of developed countries, showing the “income gap” between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% of their populations. Countries like the US, Singapore, and Portugal were the most unequal, while Finland, Japan, and Norway were more equal in terms of income. Wilkinson and Pickett claim that more unequal countries are plagued by violence and health issues, problems that are associated with poverty. To investigate how these problems might be linked to inequality, the authors compiled international data for a variety of problems, including obesity, homicide, teen births, life expectancy, educational performance, rates of imprisonment, and more. In addition, they compiled the same data for each US state.

The authors found that more equal countries, such as Japan, Sweden, and Norway, scored lower on social problems than more unequal countries such as the US, Portugal, and the UK. They argue that this demonstrates that “the overall burden of these problems is much higher in more unequal societies” (20). The authors claim that average national incomes only weakly correlate with social and health problems: While some lower-earning populations like Portugal and Spain predictably have more social and health issues, the US has a higher average income than most developed countries but ranks the worst on social and health problems. Wilkinson and Pickett argue that their analysis of individual US states demonstrates the same principle, with inequality being a better predictor of social and health issues than average incomes. Moreover, the UN’s index of child well-being in developed countries also demonstrates better well-being for children in the more equal societies of Sweden, Finland, and Norway, with more unequal countries such as the UK, New Zealand, Israel, and US ranking the worst.

The authors insist that social and health problems in developed nations are not due to a lack of material wealth but instead are due to “the scale of material differences between people within each society being too big” (25). While they acknowledge that real poverty and need do exist in developed countries, the authors claim that inequality creates real social problems by creating social pressure to be perceived as successful.

Lawmakers treat health and social problems as separate, with different professionals to tend to each issue, but the authors argue they are interconnected. They maintain that, with the current data available, analyzing average incomes is the best way to understand the “social hierarchy” in a society, and how equal or unequal it is (28). They claim that a country’s “material inequalities” provide a kind of “framework” through which people develop cultural and class differences (28). This entrenched inequality is “socially divisive” and creates an anxiety around gaining, and keeping, wealth and status (29). The authors conclude their chapter by claiming that people in wealthier countries pursue status symbols as a means of creating a dignified identity for themselves in a competitive society.

In this passage, the authors investigate why humans are inherently sensitive to differences in status. They claim that people today are more anxious, depressed, and stressed, on average, than previous generations. Younger people are also more prone to a false sense of self-esteem, which the authors call “insecure egotism” (36). In an attempt to explain these rising stress levels, Wilkinson and Pickett cite several studies that show that people are most stressed by situations in which they are socially evaluated. They claim that people prioritize preserving their “social self,” or reputation with others, and so perceive “social evaluative threats” as stressful challenges to their identity and wellbeing (38).

The authors observe that material wealth gives people a higher status in society, making it easier for them to feel “pride, dignity, and self-confidence” (40). People with higher status are more likely to be considered more competent and more successful than people with lower status. Pickett and Wilkinson claim that people long to feel “pride,” the positive social emotion, while earnestly trying to avoid “shame,” its painful opposite (41). They connect this to studies on stress, reminding the reader that social evaluative threats made participants more stressed than other forms of stressors. The authors claim that people’s stress has increased steadily over the last few generations because of the increasingly anonymous, status-conscious society in which one’s identity is tied to one’s achievements and wealth rather than family or community. They argue that the greater the inequality within a society, the more its people will feel anxious to avoid the shame of low status and gain a positive social evaluation. The authors conclude their chapter by noting that social movements such as the French Revolution have made “equality” a feature of their goals. Without equality, the authors argue, societies will not enjoy “fraternity” or “liberty” either, because of the way inequality promotes social distrust between people (46).