Michael Shank U.S. Vice President, Institute for Economics and Peace :
"The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger"
The best political book I read this year and one that I encouraged everyone to read while I was working in Congress for U.S. Rep. Michael Honda is "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger."
After reading the book, which is authored by U.K. economists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the correlations between our country’s income inequality rates and a host of social-health problems became critically clear to me. I was so convinced by the book’s data, I encouraged the congressman to host the authors for a congressional briefing, which we organized subsequently in the House Budget Committee room, given Honda’s committee membership and leadership on economic policy.
Most in Washington know about America’s income inequality problem. We know it from this year’s Congressional Budget Office, U.N. Human Development Index, and U.S. Census Office reports. All three reports show income inequality at its highest since the Great Depression, exacerbated by the last thirty years of tax, labor and trade policies in the US. While these data make for good analysis when studying the Occupy Wall Street movement and make for good sloganeering for the 99 percent, there is a serious issue at stake that is not being discussed, which the Spirit Level identifies.
According to the data crunched by the two economists, when you have high rates of income inequality, there is a direct correlation with high rates of obesity, incarceration, homicide, mental illness, drug addiction, infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, and low rates of social mobility, trust and life expectancy.
The U.S., tragically, has some of the highest rates of income inequality in the rich world and also the highest rates of these social and health problems mentioned. The burden on society, therefore, is great, both in terms of costs incurred in containing these problems but also in terms of lost economic productivity.
Data produced by the U.S. Peace Index, a report issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace, complements the authors’ findings. According to the Index, the American states that are the most peaceful are also the states that have lowest rates of these social and health problems. The most peaceful U.S. states have some of the highest high school graduation rates, the greatest educational opportunity, the best perceived access to basic services (e.g., clean water, medicine, etc.), the least amount of poverty, the highest population percentages with health insurance, the lowest percentages of teenage pregnancy, the least inequality among all household incomes, and the lowest rates of infant mortality.
A state’s ability to provide for its population in these areas, therefore, dramatically increases its capacity to lower its levels of violence. That means that they are spending less to contain the violence and the illness mentioned above and that means they are more peaceful (read: quality of life) and more economically productive.
Anyone keen to dig deeper on the economic and inequality crisis in America, then, should pick up "Spirit Level" (and the U.S. Peace Index, for that matter) to better understand what’s really going on in America. It’s not just the inequality; it’s everything else.