Via the Guardian, a review of The Spirit Level, a book I hope we get in North America soon: Almost every social problem stems from one root cause - inequality, argue two British academics. Excerpt:
Another day, another headline: today obesity, tomorrow teenage pregnancy, the day after crime figures. Social problems operate a revolving-door policy these days. As soon as one goes away, another turns up.
For the most part, these problems are regarded as entirely separate from each other. Obesity is a health issue, crime a policing issue and so on. So the government launches new initiatives here, there and everywhere, builds new hospitals, puts more money into the police and prisons. And there's little real hope of improvement. Until now, maybe.
Quietly spoken, late middle-aged and quintessentially English, Richard Wilkinson is the last person you would expect to come up with a sweeping theory of everything. Yet that's precisely what this retired professor from Nottingham medical school, in collaboration with his partner, Kate Pickett, a lecturer at the University of York, has done.
The opening sentence of their new book, The Spirit Level, cautions, "People usually exaggerate the importance of their own work and we worry about claiming too much" - yet by the time you reach the end you wonder how they could have claimed any more.
After all, they argue that almost every social problem common in developed societies - reduced life expectancy, child mortality, drugs, crime, homicide rates, mental illness and obesity - has a single root cause: inequality.The review mentions The Equality Trust, which I'm linking to.
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