A critique of The Spirit Level

Peter Saunders
(author: Beware False Prophets)

Chris Snowdon
(author: The Spirit Level Delusion)

Debate at the Royal Society of Arts, London,

22 July 2010
HAPPINESS/EQUALITY
HAPPINESS/GNI ($)
 Quality of life index
1. Health: Life expectancy at birth (in years). Source: US Census Bureau
2. Family life: Divorce rate (per 1,000 population), converted into index of 1 (lowest divorce
rates) to 5 (highest). Sources: UN; Euromonitor
3. Community life: Variable taking value 1 if country has either high rate of church
attendance or trade-union membership; zero otherwise. Source: World Values Survey
4. Material well being: GDP per person, at PPP in $. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit
5. Political stability and security: Political stability and security ratings. Source: Economist
Intelligence Unit
6. Climate and geography: Latitude, to distinguish between warmer and colder climates.
Source: CIA World Factbook
7. Job security: Unemployment rate (%.) Source: Economist Intelligence Unit
8. Political freedom: Average of indexes of political and civil liberties. Scale of 1 (completely
free) to 7 (unfree). Source: Freedom House
9. Gender equality: Measured using ratio of average male and female earnings. Source:
UNDP Human Development Report
Quality of life index
 Quality of life index
“There is no evidence for an explanation sometimes proffered
for the apparent paradox of increasing incomes and stagnant
life-satisfaction scores: the idea that an increase in someone’s
income causes envy and reduces the welfare and satisfaction of
others. In our estimates, the level of income inequality had no
impact on levels of life satisfaction.”
The Economist Quality of Life index (2005)
“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.”
Prof. Johan Mackenbach, Professor of Public Health, University of
Rotterdam
‘Income inequality and population health: Evidence favouring a negative
correlation between income inequality and life expectancy has
disappeared’, British Medical Journal, 2002 (Editorial)
‘Although there are many puzzles that remain, I conclude that there is no
direct link from income inequality to ill-health; individuals are no more
likely to die if they live in more unequal places.’
Prof. Angus Deaton, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at
the Woodrow Wilson School and the Economics Department at Princeton
‘Health, inequality and economic development’, Journal of Economic
Literature, May 2001
‘The preponderance of evidence suggests that the relationship between
income inequality and health is either non-existent or too fragile to show
up in a robustly estimated panel specification. The best cross-national
studies now uniformly fail to find a statistically reliable relationship
between economic inequality and longevity.’
- Andrew Leigh, Professor of Economics, Australian National University,
Christopher Jencks, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy, Harvard
Kennedy School, Timothy Smeeding, Distinguished Professor of Public
Affairs, University of Wisconsin.
‘Health and economic inequality’ in W. Salverda et al (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Economic Inequality 2009
LIFE EXPECTANCY
LIFE EXPECTANCY
LIFE EXPECTANCY
OBESITY
OBESITY
‘The evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of
scatter diagrams with a regression line drawn through them.  If
you remove the bold lines from the diagram, the pattern of
points mostly looks random, and the data dominated by a few
outliers.’
John Kay, Professor of Economics at London Business School,
Financial Times 2009
1. OUTLIERS:
Income Inequality and Homicide
‘If Britain became as equal as [Scandinavia] homicide rates could fall by 75%’

With USA: R2 = 0.22, p=0.025

1. OUTLIERS:
Income Inequality and Homicide
‘If Britain became as equal as [Scandinavia] homicide rates could fall by 75%’
With USA: R2 = 0.22, p=0.025 Without USA: R2 = 0.10, p=0.159 (not
significant)
1. OUTLIERS:
Inequality and Childhood Obesity
Without USA: R2 = 0.084;
With USA: R2 = 0.306; p = 0.008 p = 0.129 (not significant)
1. OUTLIERS:
Inequality and Life expectancy
Without Japan: R2 = 0.057,
With Japan: R2 = 0.154, p= 0.036.
p = 0.148 (not significant)
2.CULTURAL/HISTORICAL FACTORS:
Inequality and Women’s status
Without Scandinavia:R2 = -0.030, p =
With Scandinavia: R2 = 0.211,p = 0.016 0.503 (not significant)
2.CULTURAL/HISTORICAL FACTORS:
Inequality and Patents
(NB: Unequal variances)

With Scandinavia: R2 = 0.203, Without Scandinavia: R2 = 0.013, p = 0.287

p = 0.020 (not significant)
2.CULTURAL/HISTORICAL FACTORS
teenage births and inequality
Without Anglo & Scandinavian blocs: R2
All included: R2 = 0.505, p<0.001 = 0.119, p = 0.160 (not sig)
WHY IT’S CRUCIAL TO TEST FOR CULTURAL/ HISTORICAL FACTORS
‘Saunders tries to dismiss our evidence by variously excluding countries... arbitrarily cutting out certain countries ’ (Wilkinson and Pickett, The Guardian website, 9 July 2010)

Japan, Scandinavia UK and Anglo settler countries

• Traditional agrarian late • Very early moderniser, early
developers demise of feudalism
• Folk tradition, strong • Weak family bonds, strongly
national/collective identity individualistic values
• Ethnic homogeneity, low • Heterogenous (esp. settler
immigration, little inter- countries), plural and
marriage with ‘outsiders’ diverse
• State expresses ideal of • State distrusted as threat to
‘People’s Home’ individual liberty
3. INFLUENCE OF THIRD VARIABLES:
Inequality, Ethnicity and US homicides
Homicide and income inequality Homicide and % African-American R2
R2=0.269, p<0.001 =0.572, p<0.001
3. INFLUENCE OF THIRD VARIABLES:
Multivariate model predicting Homicide from income inequality, ethnic composition
and Deep South dummy variable

• Model fit R2 =0.613,

p<0.001.
• Beta [ETHNICITY]
=0.479, p=0.005
• p [Deep South] = 0.110;
p [inequality] = 0.140).
3. INFLUENCE OF THIRD VARIABLES
Inequality, Ethnicity and US infant mortality
Infant mortality and income inequality Infant mortality and % African-American
(R2 = 0.143, p=0.007) (R2 = 0.544 p<0.001)
3. INFLUENCE OF THIRD VARIABLES
Multivariate model predicting infant mortality from income inequality, ethnic
composition and Deep South dummy variable

• Model fit R2 = 0.487,

p<0.001
• Beta [ETHNICITY] =
0.517 (p = 0.006);
• Beta [Deep South] =
0.233 (p = 0.171);
• Beta [INEQUALITY] =
-0.030 (p= 0.811);
3. INFLUENCE OF THIRD VARIABLES
“Once we control for the fraction of the population that
is black, there is no relationship between income
inequality and mortality across states”
Angus Deaton, Professor of Economics & International Affairs, Princeton (‘Mortality,
inequality and race in American cities and states’, Social Science & Medicine, 2003

“’Correcting’" our US state analyses for the proportion

of black inhabitants is...racist because it implies the
problem is inherently the people themselves rather
than their socioeconomic position.”
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, ‘Peter Saunders’s sleight of hand’, The Guardian
web site, 9 July 2010
3. INFLUENCE OF THIRD VARIABLES
“Once we control for the fraction of the population that is black,
there is no relationship between income inequality and
mortality across states”
Angus Deaton, Professor of Economics & International Affairs, Princeton (‘Mortality, inequality and
race in American cities and states’, Social Science & Medicine, 2003

“The suggestion that the results in the US reflect the proportion

of black people in each state is inaccurate and contains a
seriously racist slur... ’Correcting’" our US state analyses for the
proportion of black inhabitants is...racist because it implies the
problem is inherently the people themselves rather than their
socioeconomic position.”
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, ‘Peter Saunders’s sleight of hand’, The Guardian web site, 9 July
2010
Summary of data analysis evaluation
Correlations examined = 20
Wholly spurious or invalid = 14.

International homicide rates, childhood conflict, women’s status, foreign aid

donations, life expectancy, adult obesity, childhood obesity, literacy and
numeracy, patents, social mobility rates.
US homicide, infant mortality, imprisonment rates.

Partially supported (but other variables explain more) = 5

Trust and imprisonment internationally, teenage births, life expectancy and
education outcomes in the US states

Supported = 1 (international infant mortality) – but data

problems here – see Snowdon
Using a 95% probability threshold as our test of statistical significance,
we should expect 1 in 20 correlations to appear significant, simply as a result of
chance.
 4: Theory is refuted by trends over time

UK total crime 1960-2000 UK infant mortality 1961-2008 UK life expectancy 1979-2008

International life expectancy 1980-2000 International infant mortality 1980-2000

5. The theory doesn’t fit Japan
‘Wilkinson & Pickett’s inadequate, one-dimensional understanding of social stratification leads to major
problems in their account’
John Goldthorpe, ‘Analysing social inequality’, European Sociological Review 2009

‘How people see you

matters...social status [is ‘Hierarchical ranking runs
one of] the most important through Japanese life....
markers of psychosocial There is no doubt that
hierarchical differences affect
stress in modern societies’
interaction between Japanese
The Spirit Level, 40-1 people in their everyday lives.
It is difficult to know how to
‘Japan is a society in which behave unless one can place
hierarchical ranking permeates other people in a hierarchical
personal interactions more than order in relation to oneself’
most’
Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese
Ron Dore, Taking Japan Seriously 1987
Society, 3rd edn, 2003
6.Different indicators, different findings...

Social Misery Index: Social misery is higher

in more equal societies
• Racist bigotry (minding if a R=0.64, Adjusted R2 = 0.39, p<
neighbour is a different 0.001
race)
• Suicide rate
• Divorce rate
• Fertility rate (reverse coded)
• Alcohol consumption
• HIV infection rate