The Spirit Level

The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone is a 2009 book by British epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson. The Spirit Level has sold over 150,000 English copies and has been translated into 23 languages. This work is famous for sparking a discourse about the potential consequences of income inequality, with critics questioning the authors’ methods and conclusions, and supporters agreeing that inequality is the cause of numerous preventable social ills. To continue spreading their work’s message, Wilkinson and Pickett have established a non-profit called Equality Trust, which lobbies municipal and federal governments to foster equality through policy.

This guide refers to the Kindle edition of this work.

Summary

In the preface, the authors explain that in their work as epidemiologists, they have researched how and why people of different social tiers experience different health outcomes and lifespans. Their findings inspired them to investigate inequality and its consequences. In Chapter 1, the authors raise the possibility that people’s place in the social hierarchy of their society is a better predictor of their health and well-being than their average income, and they suggest that the scale of inequality between people is the best predictor of a country’s social and health issues. In Chapter 2, they support this claim by discussing how countries with more unequal incomes, such as Singapore and the US, have more social and health problems than countries with less inequality, like Finland and Japan. The authors argue that the problem is not a lack of material wealth, but an entrenched inequality that is socially divisive and creates status anxiety. In Chapter 3, the authors examine how humans are keenly aware of their status and reputation, arguing that everyone has a “social self” they must defend from peers’ “evaluative threats.” According to Wilkinson and Pickett, this makes unequal situations stressful, as people try to avoid the stigma of low status and aspire to high status. In the following chapter, the authors argue that income inequality erodes social trust by creating different social classes that cannot relate to each other.

In Chapter 5, they examine the link between stress and mental health, emphasizing that more unequal countries have poorer mental health. In Chapter 6, they expand this discussion to physical health, demonstrating that more unequal countries have lower life expectancies. In Chapter 7, the authors discuss obesity, which in developed countries is associated with poverty. They suggest that the stress response to inequality encourages people to form addictions to unhealthy food. In their eighth chapter, Wilkinson and Pickett claim that egalitarian countries have better educational achievement, and they discuss the negative impact of low social status on educational performance. In the following chapter, they analyze teen pregnancy and birth statistics, showing that unequal countries have higher rates of early parenthood, which correlates strongly with poverty. In Chapter 10, the authors claim that countries with a more hierarchical social structure have more violent crime, since young men use violence to defend their pride and gain status. Next, in Chapter 11, the authors show that egalitarian countries often have more humane prison systems, while unequal countries use imprisonment liberally and are more punitive. In Chapter 12, the authors tackle social mobility, claiming that unequal countries have more rigid and tiered social classes and less social mobility.

Wilkinson and Pickett explain why they believe that unequal income and status is a main driver for creating “dysfunctional societies” in Chapter 13. In Chapter 14, “Our Social Inheritance,” the authors examine humans’ evolutionary roots and how this informs our social traits and behavior in hierarchies. In Chapter 15, they explore how becoming more egalitarian could help societies become more environmentally sustainable. In their final chapter, Pickett and Wilkinson consider how countries can take action to reduce inequality and enjoy the benefits of an egalitarian society.