Debunking the right’s attacks on The Spirit Level

In recent weeks three separate pamphlets have been published which take issue with the research and the analysis of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s widely acclaimed book ‘The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone’.

In recent weeks three separate pamphlets have been published which take issue with the research and the analysis of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s widely acclaimed book ‘The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone’.

The authors of The Spirit Level have already written a detailed response (and also this one published in The Guardian) which expose “the serious methodological errors” in Policy Exchange’s work; point out the lack of any peer-review of their detractors’ work; and cite the many other academics who have conducted research which supports The Spirit Level’s conclusions.

But there are some further gaping holes in the Policy Exchange and TaxPayers’ Alliance’s publications which are worth pointing out.

First and foremost, The Spirit Level is not the only influential study to recognise that socio-economic inequality, particular in the distribution of income and assets, is also profoundly damaging to individuals, families, society and the economy.

This year alone we have had the Marmot Review into Health Inequalities and John Hill’s National Equality Panel’s report – written by the current president of the British Medical Association and the Professor of Social Policy at LSE respectively. Both men conclude that while the poorest suffer most and require most support to boost their life chances and well-being, improvements can only happen once there are fewer gaps between all sections of society.

As Marmot puts it:

“Focusing solely on the most disadvantaged will not reduce health inequalities sufficiently. To reduce the steepness of the social gradient in health, actions must be universal, but with a scale and intensity that is proportionate to the level of disadvantage.

“We call this proportionate universalism.”

Will Hutton, the very person the government has entrusted with its review of public sector top pay, has just written a book (publication imminent) called ‘Them and Us’: politics, greed and inequality – why we need a fair society. The respected cartographer Danny Dorling has also just published a book ‘Injustice – why social inequality persists’ which pulls together reams of ONS and other data to draw parallel conclusions to The Spirit Level.

Politically this new emphasis has also been evident in the commitment by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to a London living wage of £7.85 an hour and David Cameron’s view that the differential between highest and lowest paid in any public sector agency should be no greater than 1:20. The election campaign, the Coalition Agreement and most recently the Budget have all been framed in terms of fairness, who should be paying the burden for reducing the deficit, and whether resources should be targeted most only at those at the bottom or more universally.

Policy Exchange and other recent critics conveniently forget that The Spirit Level has been embraced by people across the political spectrum.  Positive reviews have been penned from the likes of The Daily Telegraph’s economics editor and The Economist; David Cameron referenced it in his Hugo Young lecture and Michael Gove was effusive in his praise when interviewed alongside Richard Wilkinson on the Today programme. Demos have even written a pamphlet (with a foreword by David Willetts) which proclaims on its cover that “equality can be a core conservative value”.

The embrace from the right has always ever only been partial; and policy prescriptions  emanating have tended to focus on tackling poverty at the very bottom but not inequality throughout society. There are now renewed attempts within the Conservative party to abandon the concept of relative poverty and say that only absolute poverty matters. That is the political context for what looks like a co-ordinated – but academically suspect – attack on The Spirit Level.

50 Responses to “Debunking the right’s attacks on The Spirit Level

  1. PSE2010Team

    RT @leftfootfwd: Debunking the right's attacks on The Spirit Level: http://bit.ly/bRykGp

  2. Matthew Sinclair

    Malcolm,

    How does this post “debunk” anything in the report we published? All it does is state that a lot of people find The Spirit Level’s conclusions ideologically appealing or were impressed when they read it. That doesn’t refute the argument that the empirical claims it makes cannot be sustained. None of the works you’ve linked to appear to replicate independently the empirical findings in The Spirit Level.

    I was expecting better when I saw that Left Foot Forward was publishing this article, thought you might have read our report and written some kind of response to its statistical findings. Was looking forward to a robust empirical debate. Instead, you’ve written a lame appeal to irrelevant authority.

    If you want to engage in this argument properly, answer the 20 questions for The Spirit Level authors and enthusiasts that we published this morning:
    http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2010/07/the-spirit-level-20-days-20-questions.html

    Best,
    Matt Sinclair

  3. Matthew Sinclair

    And as for other academic research supporting The Spirit Level’s findings. The most heavyweight investigation, for the Journal of Economic Literature by Angus Deaton, disagreed on the key variable of life expectancy. Chris Snowdon recently wrote this about the BMJ’s editorial line on the matter:
    http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.com/2010/04/case-study-life-expectancy.html

    “In The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett cite a 1996 editorial from the BMJ which discussed the “big idea” that “the more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society.” At that time, the BMJ was broadly supportive of the theory but research into it was still in its infancy. Wilkinson and Pickett do not mention the editorial that appeared in the same journal six years later, which concluded:

    “Now that good data on income inequality have become available for 16 western industrialised countries, the association between income inequality and life expectancy has disappeared.””

  4. Philip Martin

    If I can make a suggestion…it will not seem like ducking an argument if you do not respond to Matthew Sinclair. I seriously wonder if there’s a more ideologically-fixated group than the Taxpayer’s Alliance. You can never change their mind, so why bother? Cite them as examples of deluded right-wing zealots but don’t waste time answering swivel-eyed lunatics…just a thought…

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