Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

INEQUALITY IS THE CAUSE OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMSrise in anxiety’ since neither anxiety nor self-esteem movein tandem with inequality.But even if inequality was linked to anxiety, it is verydifficult to see how this could lead to higher rates of infantmortality, lower rates of recycling or higher rates of teenbirths (to take just three of the outcomes which Wilkinsonand Pickett claim are caused by income disparities). Infantmortality in wealthy countries, for example, is largely theresult of congenital abnormalities, birth defects, prematurebirths and complications during labour. Most of thebabies involved are born critically ill, often with relativelyrare medical conditions that are almost entirely unrelatedto socioeconomic circumstance. Moreover, some ethnicgroups are at greater risk of having premature births (Villadsenet al. 2009), while other ethnic groups are at greaterrisk of having babies with congenital abnormalities (Balarajanet al. 1989). Even if we believe that income inequalityhas profound ‘psychosocial’ effects, the psychological stateof the mother has little, if any, bearing on these medicalproblems. It is likewise very difficult to imagine stress,envy and anxiety having much effect on levels of state aidto foreign countries, participation in recycling, or rates ofimprisonment, not least because all are largely dictated bygovernment policy.Wilkinson and Pickett appear to be on stronger groundwhen it comes to their key claim about life expectancysince it is well known that stress plays a part in some diseases.They concede that inequality is not linked to manycommon killers such as breast and prostate cancer, butclaim that ‘this contrasts sharply with deaths from causes153