This came to the Social Policy mailing list but I don't seem to have seen it on Radstats. My own view of the Spirit Level is that the argument is John Stuart Mill utilitarianism. That is to say it tries to argue that inequality is bad for everybody and hence we have to address it and nobody will be worse off. I would take a James Mill view i.e. argue for the greatest good of the greatest number and recognize that inequality is good for some - in the contemporary UK I would say for households in the top decile of the income distribution, irrelevant for those in the next two deciles down, and increasingly bad for the bottom seven deciles. Of course there are regional variations. You can suffer from the externalities of income inequality in terms of crime even if you are very rich and live in inner London. The Berwickshire News thinks a brick through a car window in Duns is a front page story! Overall however I think the Spirit Level's liberal approach weakens its argument. 



I do sympathize with Wilkinson and Pickett's objectives but I think that Radstats needs to have a careful examination of the arguments including statistical elements which are avowedly simplified. The ideologues of the right are worried by evidence - hence the Snowdon and Little, Dice and Saunders stuff but perhaps we need to be more radical and accept that there are real clashes of interests.



David Byrne



-----Original Message-----

From: Social-Policy is run by SPA for all social policy specialists [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Rowlingson

Sent: 08 September 2010 10:28

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Does income inequality have negative effects?



Dear Colleagues



The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has commissioned me to carry out an independent assessment of the evidence on the impact of inequality on various socio-economic outcomes.  I am writing to you see if you have any thoughts on this that you would like to contribute to the debate.



The most recent and widely cited publication in this field is: Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K (2009) The Spirit Level, Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better , Allen Lane.  There have also been some recent critiques of this work, notably by: Snowdon, C (2010) The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's New Theory of Everything,  Little Dice; and Saunders, P (2010) Beware False Prophets: Equality, the Good Society and The Spirit Level, Policy Exchange.  The aim of the JRF work is to: 

•	Summarise the main points from the existing work on the impact of income inequality, focusing particularly on The Spirit Level book.  

•	Provide an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence, in terms of the data analysed, the methods of analysis used, the theoretical framework applied and the explanations put forward for the patterns identified.  

The JRF research will also set out ways that further research could contribute to the important question of the effect of inequality, independent of poverty.



If you would like to contribute your thoughts to this debate or send me any references then I'd be very grateful.  Please send them to: [log in to unmask] by the end of September.



There will be a 10-15,000 words report from this work published in 2011. 



Thanks in advance and all the best



Karen Rowlingson

Professor of Social Policy

Director of CHASM: Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management

http://www.chasm.bham.ac.uk/ 

University of Birmingham



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