Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Coming second in the game of life

Kate Pickett 27th September 2021

‘We don’t want to decapitate the tall poppies,’ said Boris Johnson in July. Yet for Kate Pickett his ‘levelling up’ ambitions will necessitate flattening the whole social gradient.

social gradients
The not-quite social winners?—a wedding party on the Thames (Ian Luck / shutterstock.com)

There has been enough sporting competition over the summer to remind us how tough it can be to be the not-quite winner. In England, there was great excitement when the national football team made it to the final of the European championships, only to lose to Italy on penalties. There was an almost immediate backlash of racism and hatred towards the players who missed those crucial last shots on goal.

In the US Open tennis tournament, the women’s final was contested by two talented teenagers who had both done spectacularly well to get that far—but it was hard to witness the disappointment of the runner-up, Leylah Fernandez. And at the Tokyo Olympics, competitor after competitor told the cameras: ‘I’m not here for second place; I’m not here for silver.’

Yet in life, unlike in sport, surely second is good enough? We can’t all be winners but if we have a good education, a good job and all our material needs are met surely that suffices for our health and wellbeing?

To some extent this is true: nobody needs excessive income or wealth to be healthy and too big an income gap between rich and poor is damaging for population health and the good functioning of society. But it is also true that, just as in sport, being the not-quite winner does matter.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Social gradients

Almost all the major causes of death and disease have social gradients. They are not simply more common among the poor and those at the bottom of society while rare among the rest of the population. Instead, there is a steady gradient in the incidence of different diseases and causes of death between every rung on the social ladder. So, while morbidity and mortality are certainly highest among the worst off, if you are not quite at the top of the income bracket, not quite in the top social class or don’t have the most advanced possible education your risk of poor health, illness and death is still a little bit higher than for those just above you.

This is an almost ubiquitous pattern, all over the world. We see it in life expectancy and infant mortality, in health behaviours such as smoking and in obesity, chronic diseases, heart attacks, infections and most cancers. There are one or two exceptions, notably breast and prostate cancer, but otherwise social gradients in health are everywhere.

In the chart below, the bars show life expectancy for men and women in England, with the population divided into ten groups, from those living in the greatest deprivation on the left to those least deprived on the right. Usually, when we look at charts such as this, our attention is drawn to the differences between the top and the bottom—here there is a 9.5 year gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived men, and 7.7 years between the most and least deprived women.

Life expectancy at birth by area deprivation deciles and sex, England 2018

social gradients

But at every step down from affluence to deprivation, from right to left, both men and women lose, on average, a little bit of life expectancy. Men in the second least deprived group are living on average about 82 years, about a year and a half less than men in the least deprived group of all. Women in the second to top group live just over 85 years but women in the very top group live about a year longer.

Those are surprising penalties for being among the not-quite least deprived rather than making it into the top 10 per cent. Nobody in the top 20 per cent is denied any material necessity and none is likely to lack the knowledge to make healthy choices. Yet those in the second decile still die younger and suffer higher rates of almost every acute or chronic illness than those in the first.

Status matters

What these social gradients tell us is how important the social environment is—it’s status itself that matters. If you have a little bit less status than those at the top, you don’t do as well as if you have the highest status. If we want to tackle inequalities in health, we have to flatten the whole gradient, not just try to tackle health problems at the bottom.

While social gradients in health are near-ubiquitous, the steepness of the gradient varies from place to place. There is a widespread tendency for societies with smaller economic inequalities to have smaller absolute differences in health. Reducing inequalities in income, wealth, education and social class will help the whole of society—not just the poorest or those living in the deepest deprivation. We would all be winners if the playing-field were levelled.

Covid-19 has a social gradient too, of course. It was never an ‘equal-opportunity disease’, as some suggested early on. It’s too late for the pandemic we’re in, but some serious social and economic levelling would help us cope with whatever might come next.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal

Pics 6
Kate Pickett

Kate Pickett is professor of epidemiology, deputy director of the Centre for Future Health and associate director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, all at the University of York. She is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018).

You are here: Home / Society / Coming second in the game of life

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube