Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Projects
    • Corporate Taxation in a Globalised Era
    • US Election 2020
    • The Transformation of Work
    • The Coronavirus Crisis and the Welfare State
    • Just Transition
    • Artificial intelligence, work and society
    • What is inequality?
    • Europe 2025
    • The Crisis Of Globalisation
  • Audiovisual
    • Audio Podcast
    • Video Podcasts
    • Social Europe Talk Videos
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Shop
  • Membership
  • Ads
  • Newsletter

Why Inequality Is Bad For Health

by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson on 23rd September 2016 @ProfKEPickett

TwitterFacebookLinkedIn
Kate Pickett

Kate Pickett

Many of us remember the 1970s for its music and fashion, but we should also take a lesson from its mistaken beliefs. Without easy access to data or analyses of social trends, some ideas about the workings of nature and society were completely backward. Today, we know things that were simply unknowable back then.

If you asked doctors in the 1970s who was most likely to suffer a heart attack, they would share an intuition about “executive stress.” People in senior leadership positions, it was believed, face higher risks of coronary disease because of the demands of their jobs.

It turns out that there is no such thing as executive stress, and heart disease is far more common – and deadlier – in people further down the socioeconomic ladder. Politicians and policymakers (and of course physicians) now know about health inequalities and the link between social status and morbidity, even if they do not always act effectively to address it.

Richard Wilkinson

Richard Wilkinson

In the United Kingdom, this discovery dates back to 1980, when the Department of Health and Social Security published its Report of the Working Group on Inequalities in Health. The Black Report, as it became known (after its chairman, Sir Douglas Black of the Royal College of Physicians), systematically collated all the available data on socioeconomic status and health outcomes. Men in the lowest socioeconomic group, it turned out, were dying at a rate twice that of men in the highest, and the gap was growing, despite the establishment of the National Health Service.

Prime Minister James Callaghan’s Labour government commissioned the Black Report in 1977, but by the time it was published, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s new Conservative government was in power. According to the British Medical Journal, in its 2002 obituary for Black, “The Black report was not to Mrs. Thatcher’s liking and was never printed; instead, 260 photocopies were distributed in a half-hearted fashion on Bank Holiday Monday.” And, although “the report had a huge impact on political thought in the United Kingdom and overseas” – leading the OECD and the World Health Organization to assess 13 countries’ unequal health outcomes – this did not extend to “UK government policy.”

Just as Thatcher’s government was burying the Black Report and pretending that health inequalities didn’t exist (and, indeed, that “society” didn’t exist), it was also pursuing neoliberal economic policies without any evidence to support them. These measures included reduced public spending and the privatization of public goods, lower taxes, financial deregulation, and free-trade agreements.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, neoliberalism’s defenders promised that embracing market-based solutions would unleash economic growth, generating the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats. But, like executive stress, this phenomenon was a phantom. That didn’t stop Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan from pursuing an agenda that disrupted the health and wellbeing of millions of people. In the face of growing inequality, they saw the gap between rich and poor as just a side effect, and possibly even a spur for innovation, aspiration, and creativity for those lower down the ladder.

They were wrong about that, too. Even before the 2008 global financial crisis, neoliberalism was causing what the University of Durham’s Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra have called “neoliberal epidemics.” As Schrecker and Bambra and many others have shown, income inequality has profoundly damaging and far-reaching effects on everything from trust and social cohesion to rates of violent crime and imprisonment, educational achievement, and social mobility. Inequality seems to worsen health outcomes, reduce life expectancy, boost rates of mental illness and obesity, and even increase the prevalence of HIV.

Deep income inequality means that society is organized as a wealth-based hierarchy. Such a system confers economic as well as political power to those at the top and contributes to a sense of powerlessness for the rest of the population. Ultimately, this causes problems not only for the poor, but for the affluent as well.

One problem in the past was that income inequality – and its link to social and health problems – was overlooked in comparison to measures of national wealth, such as average income (GDP per capita). But, as leading economists and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum are coming to realize, income inequality is a serious problem for economic stability and growth, too.

Careful analysis of statistical data debunked the idea that stressed executives are at a higher risk for heart attacks. Now, it has debunked the 1980s myth that “greed is good,” and has revealed the extensive damage inequality causes. It was one thing to believe these myths decades ago, but when experience and all the available evidence show them to be mistaken, it is time to make a change.

“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error,” said the Roman philosopher Cicero. Now that we know how inequality harms the health of societies, individuals, and economies, reducing it should be our top priority. Anyone advocating policies that increase inequality and threaten the wellbeing of our societies is taking us for fools.

Copyright: Project Syndicate 2016 Market Myths and Social Facts

TwitterFacebookLinkedIn
Home ・ Politics ・ Why Inequality Is Bad For Health

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: ProSyn

About Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson

Kate Pickett is professor of epidemiology at the University of York. Richard Wilkinson is honorary visiting professor at the University of York.

Partner Ads

Most Popular Posts

sovereignty Brexit and the misunderstanding of sovereignty Peter Verovšek
globalisation of labour,deglobalisation The first global event in the history of humankind Branko Milanovic
centre-left, Democratic Party The Biden victory and the future of the centre-left EJ Dionne Jr
Covid 19 vaccine Designing vaccines for people, not profits Mariana Mazzucato, Henry Lishi Li and Els Torreele
EU recovery package,Next Generation EU Light in the tunnel or oncoming train? Adam Tooze

Other Social Europe Publications

US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era
The transformation of work
The coronavirus crisis and the welfare state
Whither Social Rights in (Post-)Brexit Europe?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Renewing labour relations in the German meat industry: an end to 'organised irresponsibility'?

Over the course of 2020, repeated outbreaks of Covid-19 in a number of large German meat-processing plants led to renewed public concern about the longstanding labour abuses in this industry. New legislation providing for enhanced inspection on health and safety, together with a ban on contract work and limitations on the use of temporary agency employees, holds out the prospect of a profound change in employment practices and labour relations in the meat industry. Changes in the law are not sufficient, on their own, to ensure decent working conditions, however. There is also a need to re-establish the previously high level of collective-bargaining coverage in the industry, underpinned by an industry-wide collective agreement extended by law to cover the entire sector.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

ETUI/ETUC (online) conference Towards a new socio-ecological contract 3-5 February 2021

The need to effectively tackle global warming puts under pressure the existing industrial relations models in Europe. A viable world of labour requires a new sustainability paradigm: economic, social and environmental.

The required paradigm shift implies large-scale economic and societal change and serious deliberation. All workers need to be actively involved and nobody should be left behind. Massive societal coalitions will have to be built for a shared vision to emerge and for a just transition, with fairly distributed costs, to be supported. But this is also an opportunity to redefine our societal goals and how they relate to the current focus on (green) growth.

What targets or objectives should be set and how might they be reached? How can we create a sustainable European growth model? How can we reverse the trend towards growing inequalities? What kind of Green New Deal is a realistic and feasible prospect for Europe? What elements of justice, solidarity and equity constitute a fair and sustainable social foundation? What are the roles of the market, the state, industry and civil society? And what role can trade unions play to build a sustainable future that addresses all of these dimensions?


FOR PROGRAMME CLICK HERE

Confirmed speakers include: Ursula von der Leyen, Mariana Mazzucato, Nicolas Schmit, Dominique Meda, Tim Jackson, Juliet Schor, Frans Timmermans and many more.


TO REGISTER CLICK HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Industrial relations: developments 2015-2019

Eurofound has monitored and analysed developments in industrial relations systems at EU level and in EU member states for over 40 years. This new flagship report provides an overview of developments in industrial relations and social dialogue in the years immediately prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Findings are placed in the context of the key developments in EU policy affecting employment, working conditions and social policy, and linked to the work done by social partners—as well as public authorities—at European and national levels.


CLICK FOR MORE INFO

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Read FEPS Covid Response Papers

In this moment, more than ever, policy-making requires support and ideas to design further responses that can meet the scale of the problem. FEPS contributes to this reflection with policy ideas, analysis of the different proposals and open reflections with the new FEPS Covid Response Papers series and the FEPS Covid Response Webinars. The latest FEPS Covid Response Paper by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 'Recovering from the pandemic: an appraisal of lessons learned', provides an overview of the failures and successes in dealing with Covid-19 and its economic aftermath. Among the authors: Lodewijk Asscher, László Andor, Estrella Durá, Daniela Gabor, Amandine Crespy, Alberto Botta, Francesco Corti, and many more.


CLICK HERE

Social Europe Publishing book

With a pandemic raging, for those countries most affected by Brexit the end of the transition could not come at a worse time. Yet, might the UK's withdrawal be a blessing in disguise? With its biggest veto player gone, might the European Pillar of Social Rights take centre stage? This book brings together leading experts in European politics and policy to examine social citizenship rights across the European continent in the wake of Brexit. Will member states see an enhanced social Europe or a race to the bottom?

'This book correctly emphasises the need to place the future of social rights in Europe front and centre in the post-Brexit debate, to move on from the economistic bias that has obscured our vision of a progressive social Europe.' Michael D Higgins, president of Ireland


MORE INFO

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Find Social Europe Content

Search Social Europe

Project Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

.EU Web Awards