Greater income equality is the key underlying factor that would help towards solving many of our most persistent social problems. This is the theme of a book, The Spirit Level, by Kate Picket and Richard Wilkinson.

They compared results from a number of rich developed countries and found that the best results tended to be in those countries which have relatively greater income equality. The following are a few of the issues they examined:

Britain is amongst the most unequal of the countries studied. With all these problems we do poorly when compared with most other countries. The USA also shows up badly. Typically the nordic states, Sweden, Norway and Finland all do well, as does Japan.

It must be emphasised that what matters is not whether a state is very rich or not so rich, but whether the gap between the richest and the poorest in the society is big or little. In each country the 20% richest were measured against the 20% poorest. In Sweden and Japan, the top 20% were less than four times richer than the bottom 20%. In some countries including the USA and the UK, the 20% richest were some seven times greater than the 20% poorest. Other countries came somewhere between these extremes.

Here are some instances to show how outcomes vary from country to country. Babies born in the USA are twice more likely to die in their first year than babies in Japan. The number of people imprisoned per 100,000 population is 750 in the USA, 628 in Russia, 148 in England and Wales, 128 in the Netherlands, 93 in Germany,85 in France, 79 in Sweden, 68 in Finland, and 67 in Denmark.

Life expectancy rates at birth are also interesting. Japan is 82.12 years, Canada is 81.23, France is 80.98, Sweden is 80 86, Germany is 79.26, the UK is 79.01, Denmark is 78 3, and the USA is 78.11.

Other factors than income inequality can be important, but in all cases a general trend between inequality and comparative outcomes is clear. So we can conclude that greater income equality is necessary, but not always sufficient to produce very good comparative outcomes.

The website summarising the conclusions from "The Spirit Level", together with a series of useful graphs can be found here.

For one indicitave graph click here