The Spirit Level [The book and the ensuing debate]

[Cheetah]

A Norwegian newspaper recently made me aware of a book by Wilkinson & Pickett, released last year and titled: The Spirit Level - Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better [Wikipedia].

The newspaper article then goes on to describe the apparently huge debate this book has started, especially amongst left- and right-leaning think tanks.

Since CFC-OT is what it is, I thought I should hear what peoples opinion on this is here.

A brief summary from Wikipedia:

The book details the "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption." Based on thirty years of research, it claims that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are substantially worse in more unequal rich countries. Statistics are given for 23 of the top 50 rich countries and also for 50 states of the United States of America.

Some commentator reactions:
Will Hutton of The Guardian:

Spoiler :

The connection is spelt out with stark clarity in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's remarkable new book The Spirit Level. Income inequality, they show beyond any doubt, is not just bad for those at the bottom but for everyone. More unequal societies are socially dysfunctional across the board. There is more teenage pregnancy, mental illness, higher prison populations, more murders, higher obesity and less numeracy and literacy in more unequal societies. Even the rich report more mental ill health and have lower life expectancies than their peers in less unequal societies.

Britain's growing social problems are indissolubly linked with the growth of income inequality, rising by some 40% over the last 35 years and remaining largely unchanged under New Labour despite initiatives such as the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit. The economy has changed increasingly to reward the skilled and the professionals. But the overwhelming cause has been the explosive growth of incomes at the top, of which the animating element above any other has been grotesquely high City bonuses which have become the benchmark for senior executives in business beyond. I have lost count of the number of HR directors of FTSE 100 companies who have told me now how the struggle to keep up with City pay infected their own remuneration structures.

And thus the golden thread. City bonuses have propelled income inequality which in turn has delivered more social dysfunctionality and increased social workers' case loads. The statistical causation is unarguable. What is harder is to explain why. Here Wilkinson and Pickett become more speculative.

Roy Hattersley of the New Statesman:

Spoiler :

It is, or ought to be, impossible to read The Spirit Level without feeling ashamed to discover that almost all the international comparisons of social well-being confirm that the UK has a worse record than almost every other prosperous country. Only in Portugal, Singapore and the United States of America is life expectancy lower and the infant mortality rate higher. The same picture emerges in the analysis of detriment after detriment. In the league table of teenage illiteracy, illegal drug use, adult obesity, underage pregnancy and mental illness, the UK faces relegation to the ranks of failing societies. The UK also appears near the top of those tables that measure income inequality. The correlation is near to absolute. Inequality goes hand in hand with the social diseases that blight whole communities. The rational conclusion to be drawn from the mass of evidence that Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have assembled is that all of us, irrespective of income, have much to gain from the creation of a more equal society.

John Kay of the Financial Times:

Spoiler :

In The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and co-author Kate Pickett attempt to draw wider implications. They argue that, among the rich countries of the world, states with less inequality in incomes perform better on a wide range of social indicators. The claim is supported by evidence on diverse phenomena such as reported happiness, mortality, obesity, teenage pregnancy, social mobility, drug use and the incidence of violence.

The book will probably irritate most economists, including those who, like me, are sympathetic to its basic stance, and believe that economic success is culturally embedded. The irritation partly comes from the superficiality of the two policy chapters, which make a convoluted connection to climate change, and wax eloquently in support of worker-controlled enterprises.

But a larger source of irritation is the authors’ apparent belief that the application of regression methods to economic and social statistics is as novel to social science as it apparently is to medicine. The evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of scatter diagrams, with a regression line drawn through them. No data is provided on the estimated equations, or on relevant statistical tests. If you remove the bold lines from the diagram, the pattern of points mostly looks random, and the data dominated by a few outliers.

Charles Moore of the Telegraph:

Spoiler :

Its method of persuasion is to present itself as non-ideological. The authors have previously conducted long studies of "health inequalities". "Our training in epidemiology means that our methods are those used to trace the causes of diseases in populations." They have worked with "evidence-based medicine", they say; now they want to create "evidence-based politics".

This turns out to be a bogus way of arguing. Their case is not evidence-based, but evidence-decorated. It starts with the unargued assumption that inequality is the cause of almost every misery, and then seeks, often interestingly but certainly not scientifically, to illustrate its point. The epidemiology comparison is artful because it makes the reader believe we can stop inequality just as we stopped smallpox. But of course we cannot. This is a political tract, and, underneath the graphs and the health-talk, a surprisingly traditional socialist one.

The book seeks to show that inequality produces poor health, more murder, more mental instability, less trust and too much "chronic mobilisation of energy in the form of glucose into the bloodstream", resulting in obesity. Human society is better when we resemble bonobos, the authors claim: apparently these creatures solve problems via mutual masturbation, whereas nasty, rough chimps fight for status. Naturalists inform me, by the way, that bonobos are extremely stupid.

So what do people here think? Are inequalities the root of all evils?

 

[warpus]

It seems to make sense to me. When everyone's equal, people have less to get upset about, and thus tend to hold hands and hug a lot more often, leading to a more prosperous and productive society.

 

[Imrahil91]

Aren't almost all poor countries also very unequal? I'm quite sure nearly all third world countries are more unequal than first world countries, including the USA. Mostly because of a filthy rich elite compared to the rest of the population. In Western countries, I think the unequal countries or states are the ones with most poor people. And poor people often do badly on all kinds of social tests, and it could be because they are relatively poor, or it might as well be the other way around.

 

[Brighteye]

Aren't almost all poor countries also very unequal? I'm quite sure nearly all third world countries are more unequal than first world countries, including the USA. Mostly because of a filthy rich elite compared to the rest of the population. In Western countries, I think the unequal countries or states are the ones with most poor people. And poor people often do badly on all kinds of social tests, and it could be because they are relatively poor, or it might as well be the other way around.

The book focussed specifically on rich societies, and examined variations in inequality within the rich world. The authors most definitely are not claiming anything to do with very poor countries. They address your concerns, since those are obvious answers to the findings, and they have found that these suggestions are not solutions to the findings. This is why they draw the conclusions that they have.

As for Charles Moore of the Telegraph, he's clearly a dolt who can't understand a book. The book presents a summary of what it's about first not because the authors started with a conclusion and then worked to prove it in their research, but because that's a good way to write about it afterwards! John Kay's review has some more sensible things to say, but I think that reviewing a book written for popular reading as though it were a research paper will always lead you to find fault.
If he wants the detailed methodology he should read the authors' papers, not their book.

 

[El_Machinae]

The Royal Society held a debate on this book a couple of months ago. I haven't listened to it, but I've really enjoyed the RSA's ability to interview authors of important books in 1 hr long stretches. It's like a Jon Stewart interview, but more serious and in-depth.
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/the-spirit-level

 

[Ayatollah So]

Does the book do longitudinal studies?

No one seems to have mentioned what seems highly important: beyond a certain level of income (below the average in prosperous countries) more money does little to improve Happiness. (In fact, since 1960 or so wealth has doubled without improving happiness in advanced countries.) So a more equal society, if it has the same (or even slightly less) wealth is on average happier.

 

[luiz]

Seems bogus to me (did not read the book). I can understand some ills being caused by inequality, but obesity? Come on. IIRC, Germany, Austria and Denmark are among the fattest nations in the world, and they're all relatively equal societies. I also found this criticism on wiki:

In May 2010, Christopher Snowdon, an independent researcher and adjunct scholar at the Democracy Institute,[31][32] published a book largely devoted to a critique of The Spirit Level, entitled The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's New Theory of Everything.[33] One of its central claims was that Wilkinson excludes certain countries from his data without justification, such as South Korea and the Czech Republic. Snowdon claimed that by ignoring developed countries that do not fit the trend that Wilkinson created the illusion of empirical confirmation of his main thesis, and that if these countries were included the trend would disappear or even reverse. Snowdon also argues that Wilkinson and Pickett falsely claim the existence of a clear scientific consensus on the supposed link between health and income inequality when much of the literature disagrees with their findings, and that there is little academic research on many of their other claims, such as the link between inequality and mental illness. Wilkinson and Pickett released a response to the book on the Equality Trust website[34] and responded to similar criticisms in the Wall Street Journal.[19] Snowdon has in turn responded to their criticisms. [35]

It does seem that the authors are trying to come up with a "theory of everything".

 

[Brighteye]

I think that Snowdon gives his game away when he gets politics involved. He specifically calls his book an attack on 'the left'. This demonstrates that he's actually a right-wing reactionary who didn't like the conclusions and then attacked them.

Of course, his criticisms could still be valid. But his motivations seem impure. He reminds me of climate change deniers who call it another lefty plot to control people.
Apart from the obvious problem that left and right are both interested in controlling people, and have little relationship to liberals who are not, it's not really an engagement with the science, so much as a statement that politics is more important than truth.

 

[luiz]

I think that Snowdon gives his game away when he gets politics involved. He specifically calls his book an attack on 'the left'. This demonstrates that he's actually a right-wing reactionary who didn't like the conclusions and then attacked them.

Of course, his criticisms could still be valid. But his motivations seem impure. He reminds me of climate change deniers who call it another lefty plot to control people.
Apart from the obvious problem that left and right are both interested in controlling people, and have little relationship to liverals who are not, it's not really an engagement with the science, so much as a statement that politics is more important than truth.

No doubt Snowdon's argument is politically motivated, but then again so is the book. This does not seem to be a scientific book; it's a political book that uses science.

At any rate, no matter the correlations they find, they would never make me believe that inequality influences obesity.

 

[Brighteye]

I listened to the RSA recording, and remain very sceptical of the naysayers. In fact, I find it a little startling to find that people have written a book specifically to counter another book. Anti-Dawkins cash-ins were bad enough.
I think that the book expands my understanding of stress and obesity, which is on a purely mechanistic level, to give a very interesting relationship.

I find it annoying when as soon as scientists make statements that might influence politics, they're derided as being political, rather than proper scientists.
Science is how we discover truth in this world. Every political book ought to use science. And every scientist who discovers something relevant should be political. The idea that scientists should sit in a corner and wait for a politico to find them if he needs them is outrageous. Science should be at the centre of politics, and people who find that their dearly-cherished beliefs don't stand up to scrutiny should accept that, rather than forming a political resistance to truth.

Not that I expect any better of politicians. It has always been about power, rather than doing what's right.

 

[luiz]

Scientists can and should be political if their finding is relevant on the realm of politics. But once they enter that realm they should also learn to deal with political criticism, which goes far beyond your typical scientific criticism. This is of course mostly true on the humanities field, as they typically have the most political relevance.

I see nothing wrong, on principle, in writing a book to counter another specific book, especially if we're talking about a high impact book.

 

[El_Machinae]

At any rate, no matter the correlations they find, they would never make me believe that inequality influences obesity.

This seems to be a strong stance to take. Do you believe that mood and attitude can affect trends regarding obesity?

We'd especially want to use multi-factorial correlations. Obviously, increasing income can cause obesity because increased income leads to tasty foods and desk jobs. But I don't think it's contentious to suggest that happiness can affect obesity levels, too.

 

[luiz]

This seems to be a strong stance to take. Do you believe that mood and attitude can affect trends regarding obesity?

We'd especially want to use multi-factorial correlations. Obviously, increasing income can cause obesity because increased income leads to tasty foods and desk jobs. But I don't think it's contentious to suggest that happiness can affect obesity levels, too.

I think the influence, if any, would be negligible when compared to other factors, which are mostly cultural.

Americans are fat because they love junk food and use their cars for everything, thus exercising in average less than, say, the French or the Ducth that use their bikes a lot. Those are cultural issues, not at all related to inequality.

To establish a link between obesity and inequality one has to travel through several links that seem tenous on themselves, such as that between mood and inequality (Latin American countries are very unequal but at the same time the population generally has a very good "mood" and is happy about life).

Again, cultural factors seem to be dominant and I don't buy this which does indeed seem to be a "theory of everything".

 

[Brighteye]

Scientists can and should be political if their finding is relevant on the realm of politics. But once they enter that realm they should also learn to deal with political criticism, which goes far beyond your typical scientific criticism. This is of course mostly true on the humanities field, as they typically have the most political relevance.

See, you're stating current fact. I disagree that this is the way that it should be. I think that science actually has most relevance, but is not recognised for it. It is the scientific method and scientific analysis that should guide policies on anything that involves bulk data and grouping people together to obtain a general trend, such as public health.
If scientific research stands up to scientific criticism, what further criticism can be relevant? At the moment, I agree that political criticism is far more powerful. I just dispute that it has any value in determing truth, rather than policy.