Résumé Spirit Level PDF

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Résumé du livre "the spirit level: why equality is better for everyone" pour le cours de M1 de monsieur David Fée...

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Welfare State in the UK Book Summary The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Spirit Level, published in 2009, was written by Richard Wilkinson, professor at the University of Nottingham, and Kate Pickett, professor at the University of York. The main theme of the book is inequalities, and more precisely how inequalities of average income within countries are related to health and social problems. The book is divided in three parts. The first one is titled “Material success, social failure.” In it, the authors claim that the rise in inequalities is the cause of both the broken society and economy. They also explain that developed or rich countries have now “reached a threshold of material living standards after which the benefits of further economic growth are less substantial” (p. 10), so increases in incomes will no longer contribute to raise the wellbeing of the people in these countries. This means that we will be the “first generation that has to find other ways to improve the real quality of life” (p. 29) and the best way to do so is to reduce inequalities. They also argue that health and social problems are more prevalent in countries where income differences are bigger. In this part of the book, they show how anxiety has increased in developed countries, and with it an “unhealthy kind of self-esteem, ‘threatened egotism’, ‘insecure high self-esteem’, ‘narcissism’” (p. 37). Their explanation is that our status relative to others is now what matters, and that our position in society is now a crucial part of a person’s identity. They have identified the three principal sources of stress in our societies which are associated with the increase of anxiety and ‘threatened egotism’: low social status, lack of friends, and stress in early life (p. 39). So they conclude that greater inequality leads to a greater competition for status, which leads to increased anxiety. This part of the book also explains that the authors ended up with 23 countries because they provided the adequate data for this analysis and gives the list of the health and social issues that will be analyzed in the second part: level of trust, mental illness, life expectancy and infant mortality, obesity, children’s educational performances, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment rates, and social mobility (p. 18). The first chapter of the second part of the book argues that the “quality of social relations deteriorates in less equal societies ” (p. 51) and that more equal countries have higher trust levels. The authors use the example of Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in

2005, where US troops were sent to maintain order instead of helping the people whose houses had been destroyed. They also use the rise in the number of SUVs, gated communities, and the increase in sales of security equipment to illustrate the “uneasiness and fear of one another” (p. 58). So trust is an important measure to see the level of inequalities within a society. The following chapter focuses on mental health and drug use. In it, the authors show that mental health for both adults and children are correlated with inequality, and so is drug use. The concept of “luxury fever” (p. 70), when rich people buy more so poorer people want the same things or at least buy more things, is said to be used by advertisers and “encourage invidious social comparisons” (p. 70), creating mental health issues. So because of the importance of social relationship for mental health, the authors find that it is predictable that countries with lower levels of trust and fragile community life have also worse mental health. The chapter on physical health and life expectancy demonstrates that “low social status clear impact on physical health” (p. 75) with conditions such as depression, suicide, cancers, ulcers, etc. The authors show that more equal countries have better health levels. They use the case of the United Kingdom which was more equal and cohesive during the First and Second World War, with better health and lower crime rates (p. 85). Physical activity is also related to income inequalities according to statistics from the United States, where people eat more and exercise less. Obesity is a problem which used to be linked with wealth, but it has now reversed. Poorer people are now more at risk than others. But it is not just because healthier options are more expensive. The example of a man who often goes to fast food establishments is given to show that eating there is a way to show that you have enough money to eat there, so it gives you a status and respect. Statistics are also provided to show that more educated people earn more, are healthier, and their children will do better at school. More unequal societies have worse educational attainment (p. 105). One of the biggest influence on this attainment is family background. And more equal countries have longer maternity leave periods, during which parents have more time to take care of their children, which has a big impact. More unequal countries also have higher of teenage birth rates (p. 123). This can be linked to the issue of trust, because if you can trust your family or partner to provide for you, you can wait and have fewer children and spend more time and resources on each one of them. In the following chapter, numbers show that violence is mostly perpetrated by men, that it is an “attempt to ward off or eliminate feeling of shame and humiliation” (p. 133) and that young men are more influenced by their peers. The authors indicate that women will use clothes and make-up to strengthen their sexual attractiveness while men compete for status. Because inequalities heighten the competition for a status that matters even more, there is more violence

in more unequal societies. This chapter also shows that “violent crime rates are lower in cohesive neighborhoods” (p. 140), suggesting that trust is a major element here. The chapter on imprisonment and punishment displays a paradox in the United Kingdom: even though crime rates are decreasing, imprisonment rates are increasing (p. 147). The authors explain that unequal societies are more punitive, while more equal ones “emphasize treatment and rehabilitation” (p. 151). They once again go back to the idea of trust, saying that the loss of it has led to an increased fear of crime, which itself led to more punitive societies with higher imprisonment rates. In the last chapter of the second part, it is shown that poverty concentration has increased with income inequality, and thus decreased social mobility, which is the idea of equality of opportunities. The third part of the book advocates for a better society. The first chapter argues that “income inequality exerts a comparable effect across all population subgroups” (p. 179), so reducing it would be beneficial for the whole population. Countries could become more equal through different methods: predistribution (equality in gross income before taxes and benefits or through redistribution (taxes and benefits). But it is suggested that the method does not matter as much as long as something is done (p. 184). The authors also show that the most powerful determinants of many aspects of our lives is not ethnicity, single parenting, or history, but economic growth and social differences. The next chapter explains that humans “have unrivalled potential to benefit from co-operation” (p. 201). We were made to achieve equality and “more humane society may be a great deal more practical than the highly unequal ones in which so many of us live now” (p. 216). In the penultimate chapter of the book, the authors indicate that growing inequalities have “made it harder for people to maintain standards relative to each other” and pressured them to consume more (p. 228). Encouraged by advertising, people have saved less and borrowed more to try to maintain these standards. But it is important to remember that consumerism, materialism, and individualism “are not fixed expressions of human nature” (p. 233) but rather characteristics of our current societies. So reducing levels of consumption could improve equality in societies and improve our quality of life as well as reduce CO2 emissions. And as we all know there is a crucial need to protect the planet now more than ever, so we have to think of sustainable ways of decreasing inequalities. Policies to cut emissions could be put in place, but “must be seen as applied fairly to gain public acceptance” (p. 222) – for example, the richest people consume more, thus have a bigger ecological imprint. The authors also maintain that greater equality would make economic less necessary.

The final chapter of the book explores ways people could take to reduce inequalities. It contends that there is a need for “a sustained sense of direction and a view of how we can achieve the necessary economic and social changes” (p236), that there should be a stable phase of small changes rather than one big revolution. Current polls suggest that there is a “substantial desire for narrower income differences” (p. 249). Some countries in East Asia have become more egalitarian because they faced crisis of legitimacy or because they needed to gain popular support (Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore) (p. 241), so the public opinion is an important factor of change. The authors think that modern inequalities exist because the power is concentrated in the economic sphere, and that democracy should be extended to the workplace, by encouraging employee-ownerships systems for example (p. 255). But it is not very effective alone, so it should be combined with participative management methods (p. 256). This chapter also offers an explanation as to why income inequalities came to be: not simply the market forces, but rather “changes in institutions, norms, and the use of political power” (p. 243) such as pre-tax earnings rise, less progressive tax rates, or benefit cuts. But the most important factor of inequality is trade union membership, with its decline closely associated with widening income differences (p. 245). This chapter ends by advising societies to try to pay companies’ research and development cost without putting price which restrict access to the benefits of what they have produced (drugs, innovations, etc.) (p. 267). In conclusion this book present evidence which indicate that most important health and social problems of the rich world are more common in more unequal societies. But in the long run there is “an almost unstoppable historical trend towards greater equality” (p. 267), and that we should find ways to lean towards this trend while keeping the idea of sustainability in mind....