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How economic inequality harms societies
Richard Wilkinson, TED
In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson charts data that proves societies that are more equal are healthier, happier societies.
(October 2011)
Official: Cabinet ministers wrong about cause of riots
Nigel Morris, The Independent
Last night the Government was warned that society was storing up future problems by ignoring the growing number of disaffected young people growing up in poverty in the inner cities.
The analysis by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) suggested that many of the looters were caught in a cycle of deprivation, poor educational attainment, unemployment and criminality. More than a third (35 per cent) of adult rioters appearing in court were living on benefits – three times the proportion nationally.
Almost two thirds (64 per cent) of the young rioters lived in the country’s worst-off districts, with 42 per cent relying on free school meals. Two-thirds were classed as having special educational needs – three times the national average – and more than a third had been excluded from school in the past year. Just one in 10 had achieved five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, compared with more than half of pupils across the country.
The MoJ concluded: “It is clear that compared to population averages, those brought before the courts were more likely to be in receipt of free school meals or benefits, were more likely to have had special educational needs and be absent from school, and more likely to have some form of criminal history.”…
(25 October 2011)
Department of Justice report
Home Office report
Brute threats are no remedy for despair
Laurie Penny, The Independent
It’s official: the riots of 2011 had more to do with poverty and social exclusion than gangs. Government figures show that only 13 per cent of those arrested in the disorder were identified as gang members…
For the young and the poor, there are few ways to claw back crumbs of status from a society that shuts you out, and joining a gang is one of them. Many members of the British establishment prefer to see gang culture as operating in a political vacuum, a savage “otherwhere” with its own rules and its own criminal economy, not only operating outside the law, but now looting and robbing members of the public to pay for its members’ extravagant lifestyles. By a curious coincidence, the young people rampaging through the streets of London, Manchester and other major cities in August tended, when anyone actually bothered to ask them, to speak of the political class in precisely the same way…
(25 October 2011)
…another view on this…
Were the riots about poverty? No, but new data links crime and the broken society
Neil O’Brien, The Daily Telegraph
The Ministry of Justice released some much more detailed data yesterday on the social background of those convicted of offences during this summer’s riots. They have stirred up the argument again about whether the riots were about poverty…
I think quite a lot of the arguments about the riots are really a proxy for a different debate, which is about the links between poverty and crime more generally.
Avoiding riots is mostly about policing, not poverty. Criminals are not in general irrational, and most rioters had criminal history. These people make calculations about the odds of profiting versus getting caught, and the slow police response changed the odds for them for a couple of days…
The data on the riots is telling us something interesting about the roots of criminality. If we want to prevent crime, rather than just mop up the consequences, we have got to get better at using what we know to take young people off the conveyor belt to crime.
(25 October 2011)
Neil O’Brien is Director of the think tank Policy Exchange
The “Last Place Aversion” Paradox
Ilyana Kuziemko and Michael I. Norton, Scientific American
If ever Americans were up for a bit of class warfare, now would seem to be the time. Onto this scene has stepped the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which seeks to bring together a disparate group of protesters united in their belief that the current income distribution is unfair.
Or, maybe not…
Support for redistribution, surprisingly enough, has plummeted during the recession. For years, the General Social Survey has asked individuals whether “government should reduce income differences between the rich and the poor.” Agreement with this statement dropped dramatically between 2008 and 2010, the two most recent years of data available. Other surveys have shown similar results…
Our recent research suggests that, far from being surprised that many working-class individuals would oppose redistribution, we might actually expect their opposition to rise during times of turmoil – despite the fact that redistribution appears to be in their economic interest. Our work suggests that people exhibit a fundamental loathing for being near or in last place – what we call “last place aversion.” This fear can lead people near the bottom of the income distribution to oppose redistribution because it might allow people at the very bottom to catch up with them or even leapfrog past them…
(12 October 2011)
Report link:Last-place Aversion”: Evidence and Redistributive Implications
