Inequality is rising. The Gini coefficient (the most common yardstick for measuring inequality, where 0 means everyone has the same income and 1 means one person has all the income) has gone up in many countries. Since the 1980s, the US has seen an increase from 0.34 to 0.38. China increased from under 0.3 to over 0.4.
Some people claim this should not be seen as a bad thing. It may just mean that the wealthier are getting wealthier not the poor getting poorer. In the 1990s the incomes of the richest fifth in the USA increased by 27% whilst the incomes of the poorest fifth increased at a slower rate of just 10%.
However, there is increasing evidence to show that even this form of increasing inequality makes the poorer worse off, even though they may not actually be in material terms. It has psychological and mental effects. The principle of ostentatious consumption is that your satisfaction from consuming a good does not come from itself but from others seeing you with the good. The value of wearing a Rolex watch comes largely from the feeling when others see you with it, not due to the intrinsic merit of the watch to tell the time better than a plastic one from Argos. In a similar fashion, people want to be not just rich - but richer than your neighbour. It is this sense of status that can affect stress levels and health.
Therefore, when others are becoming richer - something that you want to have - can have negative health implications for the poor, even if they are not becoming poorer.
--------
*This is the view argued in "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in 2009.
Some people claim this should not be seen as a bad thing. It may just mean that the wealthier are getting wealthier not the poor getting poorer. In the 1990s the incomes of the richest fifth in the USA increased by 27% whilst the incomes of the poorest fifth increased at a slower rate of just 10%.
However, there is increasing evidence to show that even this form of increasing inequality makes the poorer worse off, even though they may not actually be in material terms. It has psychological and mental effects. The principle of ostentatious consumption is that your satisfaction from consuming a good does not come from itself but from others seeing you with the good. The value of wearing a Rolex watch comes largely from the feeling when others see you with it, not due to the intrinsic merit of the watch to tell the time better than a plastic one from Argos. In a similar fashion, people want to be not just rich - but richer than your neighbour. It is this sense of status that can affect stress levels and health.
Therefore, when others are becoming richer - something that you want to have - can have negative health implications for the poor, even if they are not becoming poorer.
--------
*This is the view argued in "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment