This had been in my reading pile for a while, so I tackled it over Christmas between the turkey and mince pies. Using established and available data the authors show how countries that perform poorly on social indicators such as teenage births and crime rates frequently have a large disparity in incomes. In contrast, more equal societies do better on a vast range of measures.

Note this isn’t a communist manifesto, it isn’t saying that a perfectly equal society would be paradise. It’s arguing that the single most effective way of explaining why the USA and the UK have, for instance, worse social problems than the Scandinavian countries is the greater disparity in incomes. Once a country has developed, absolute wealth has little or no bearing on such issues, it’s the amount of difference between the haves and have-nots. And this gradient effects not just the poor, but the whole of society regardless of their wealth. You can be wealthy and have poorer health in an unequal country than if you lived in a more equal society.

The idea is a powerful one and while sociology isn’t my field I can recognise that when a single idea manages to simply explain a very wide range of phenomena it’s probably onto something. And although it might be a confirmation bias in myself, it certainly makes sense and feels right. And the facts and data don’t lie.[1] Aside from the content the actual book seems to be an example of a well presented thesis, a point relevant to my own studies. It briefly explains the method (enough for you to reproduce), spends a few chapters presenting the big idea and then tackles each social indicator in turn addressing potential criticisms, connecting to other studies and disproving alternative explanations. The authors (both professors) then round up with some chapters on the implications. A perfect PhD thesis. Obviously professors are capable of knocking these things out before breakfast. It will take me 4 years >sigh<

[1] Equality Trust It’s also noticeable how the data is presented very simply to avoid accusations of sleight of hand. For a small donation you can get the original spreadsheets of data so I might try that and try a more sophisticated analysis such as Spearman rank analysis. I suspect it will simply strengthen the findings.