The mysterious SocProf, who writes The Global Sociology Blog, offered a nice review of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett‘s book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.  Wilkinson and Pickett offer transnational research showing how, exactly, income inequality is related to bad outcomes on average.  In other words, as SocProf puts it, ”…egalitarianism is not a bleeding heart’s wet dream but rather the only rational course of action in terms of public policy.”  The 11 graphs, available at the Equality Trust website, speak for themselves.

Societies with more income inequality have:

1. Higher infant death rates
2. Higher rates of mental illness
3. Higher incidence of drug use
4. Higher school drop out rates
5. Imprison a larger proportion of their population
6. Higher rate of obesity
7. Individuals are less likely to be in a different social class than their parents
8. Trust others less
9. Higher rates of homicide
10. Give less in foreign aid
11. Worse child well-being

If you’re in the USA guess where your numbers skew…