The Inner Level

by Richard Wilkinson

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  Acknowledgements

  This book has benefitted from three rounds of editing: from Shan Vahidy, Stuart Proffitt and Ben Sinyor. We felt very honoured by the quality and depth of thought each gave to our argument and how it could be expressed more clearly and elegantly. Rather than a few verbal comments and minor corrections to spelling and grammar from a quick read-through, each provided us with detailed notes on almost every page of our manuscript and a long list of more fundamental points to consider. At each stage we felt in good hands, guided to higher professional standards. Theirs are rare skills and we are extremely fortunate that our work received so much of their attention. We are deeply indebted to them.

  At the University of York, Kate’s research group read and commented on draft chapters, giving us great feedback while being gentle with us – it’s not only students who fear their work being read by others! Thank you to Pippa Bird, Deborah Box, Alex Christensen, Holly Essex, Lorna Fraser, Stuart Jarvis, Ben Mallicoat, Madeleine Power, Stephanie Prady, Katie Pybus, Marena Ceballos Rasgado, Noortje Uphoff and Tiffany Yang. We are also particularly indebted to Sean Baine, Danny Dorling and Allison Quick for their thoughtful comments on early drafts, and to our many helpful academic colleagues and their families, too many to name, some of whom have given special support over the past few years. We thank Barbara Abrams, Christo Albor, Dimitris Ballas, Stephen Bezruchka, Karen Bloor, Jonathan Bradshaw, Baltica Cabieses, Helena Cronin, Martin Daly, Danny and Alison Dorling, Frank Elgar, Manuel Antonio Espinoza, Paul Gilbert, Hilary Graham, Sheri Johnson, Ichiro Kawachi, Sebastian Kraemer, Rosie McEachen, Annamarie Mercer, Jon Minton, Martin O’Neill, Annie Quick, Hector Rufrancos, Trevor Sheldon, Deborah Smith, ‘Subu’ Subramanian, Len Syme, Laura Vanderbloemen and John Wright. We also thank our ‘bus family’ who came together as part of an international expert working group in Bhutan, now part of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WE-All): Bob Costanza, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Enrico Giovannini, Ida Kubiszewski, Hunter Lovins, Jacquie McGlade, Lars Mortensen, Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir, Debra Roberts, Roberto de Vogli and Stewart Wallis – you have expanded our thinking and our world.

  The graphs shown in our figures reflect the work of a large number of researchers in different countries. We are particularly indebted to those who sent us their original research data so that we could redraw their figures in a consistent format. They are: Richard Layte (Figure 2.1); Jonathan Burns (Figure 2.6); Steve Loughnan and Peter Kuppens (Figure 3.1); Paul Piff (Figures 3.3 and 3.4); Matteo Iacoviello (Figure 4.4); Frank Elgar (Figure 5.2); Lindsey Macmillan and Claire Crawford (Figure 6.3); Ida Kubiszewski (Figure 8.2); Colin Gordon (Figure 9.3); and Larry Mishel (Figure 9.4).

  We are also grateful to current and former staff, volunteers, advisers, board members and trustees of The Equality Trust (www.equalitytrust.org,uk), with special thanks to our co-founder, Bill Kerry, the Chair of Trustees, Sean Baine, and Director, Wanda Wyporska, for campaigning and informing the public about inequality. Thank you to The Equality Trust’s many supporters: individuals, affiliated local groups and funders, including the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Network for Social Change, Tudor Trust, and the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust. Director Katharine Round and producer Christo Hird of Dartmouth Films created The Divide, a moving interpretation of our work, which reaches new audiences to tell the story of the impact of inequality: thank you both. Finally we thank everybody who has taken the time to read our work, invited us to speak, spoken encouraging words, or spread the message; we wish
we could thank all of you individually, and hope you will continue with us on the journey.

  THE BEGINNING

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  ALLEN LANE

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  First published 2018

  Copyright © Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, 2018

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted

  Cover images: © Getty Images

  Author photo: © Alex Holland

  ISBN: 978-0-141-97540-5

  PROLOGUE

  fn1 The Index of Health and Social Problems measures life expectancy, trust, mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction), obesity, infant mortality, children’s maths and literacy scores, imprisonment rates, homicide rates, teenage births and social mobility.

  fn2 We use the term ‘social status’ here in the generally accepted everyday sense, which coincides with ‘social position’ or where you are on the social ladder. Epidemiologists engaged in research on health inequalities used to spend time discussing whether it was best measured by income, education, occupation or the kind of neighbourhood you lived in. In the past, UK government statistics categorized occupations into social classes according to a rather subjective judgement of their ‘general social standing’. Not only is no measure perfect, but the truth is that no one quite knows what an ideal measure would be. As will become clear later in this book, we believe that our judgements of social status are still coloured by our evolved psychological tendency, probably going back to how pre-human primates judged dominance and subordination in ranking systems.