DISCOVERYPROGRAMME

"The health and social problems which we have found to be related to inequality tend to be treated by policy makers as if they were quite separate from one another, each needing separate services and remedies. We pay doctors and nurses to treat ill-health, police and prisons to deal with crime, remedial teachers and educational psychologists to tackle educational problems, and social workers, drug rehabilitation units, psychiatric services and health promotion experts to deal with a host of other problems. These services are all expensive, and none of them is more than partially effective. For instance, differences in the quality of medical care have less effect on people’s life expectancy than social differences in their risks of getting some life-threatening disease in the first place. And even when the various services are successful in stopping someone reoffending, in curing a cancer, getting someone off drugs or dealing with educational failure, we know that our societies are endlessly re-creating these problems in each new generation. Meanwhile, all these problems are most common in the most deprived areas of our society and are many times more common in more unequal societies."

- From The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Alan Lane Publishers 2009. Reviewed by David Runciman in London Review of Books, Vol 31, No 20.