Introducing The Equality Trust - The first London Quakers Dialogue
The First London Quakers’ Dialogue in November 2007 was on the subjects of Inequality and Happiness.
Attenders at the Dialogue were introduced to the Equality Trust and many signed up to their mailing list.
AN UPDATE ON THE TRUST
- The Trust has recently obtained some funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to help it plan its campaigning. The Trust will be working with the Sheila McKechnie Foundation to develop its strategy in the coming months.
- The Trust has also formed an Advisory Group, which includes journalists, academics, environmentalists and representatives from faith groups, to provide it with strategic guidance as it develops.
- Bill Kerry (one of the co-founders) will be starting a part-time voluntary internship with The Equality Trust in mid/late July with the aim of stepping up the activities of the Trust in general.
WHAT IS THE EQUALITY TRUST?
The Equality Trust is an educational and campaigning organisation set up in February 2007 by Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett (both academic epidemiologists working on health inequalities), and Bill Kerry, a Chartered Secretary. Its website is due to be launched in the summer of 2008 at www.equalitytrust.org.uk.
The Trust is not affiliated to any company or political organisation. It was established in response to powerful new evidence which shows that societies with bigger income differences become socially dysfunctional, suffering more – often many times more – from a wide range of health and social problems. An overview of the evidence is outlined below.
The Evidence
Recent evidence, based on comparable figures of income inequality in different developed countries, shows that the larger the income differences between rich and poor in each society, the more socially dysfunctional the society becomes. Many people recognise that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive, but the scale of the damage which research now demonstrates, goes beyond anyone’s expectations.
More unequal societies have lower life expectancy, worse mental health, higher homicide rates, more obesity and higher teenage birth rates. Children do less well at school, drug problems are more common, a higher proportion of the population is imprisoned, people trust each other less, and community life is weaker.
Politicians and policy makers treat these health and social problems as if they were unrelated to each other, and each required different services – more police, more prisons, more doctors, more social workers etc. However, they are all rooted in relative deprivation and become more common lower down the social hierarchy. Inequality makes them worse because it exacerbates all the problems of class, status differentiation, status competition and hierarchy.
But the harmful effects of inequality are not confined to the poor. The evidence suggests that the vast majority of the population benefit from greater equality. Even the comfortably off middle class do better. If you compare people with exactly the same income in different societies, in the more equal societies they will tend to live longer, be less likely to suffer violence, and live in more cohesive communities; in addition, their children will be more likely to do well at school, and less likely to become involved in drugs or to become teenage mothers.
And rather than finding that societies perform well on one outcome and badly on another, more unequal societies tend to do worse across the board. So societies which do badly – for instance – on health, tend also to have large prison populations, high rates of obesity, low levels of trust and more violence: they become socially dysfunctional.
The Environment and Quality of Life
Policies to tackle inequalities also have an important part to play in the fight against global warming. Sustainability requires us to reduce consumerism and the waste of the earth’s resources. Because greater equality reduces status competition and the tendency for people to use consumption to maintain status and a sense of personal worth, it contributes to sustainability by reducing the pressure to consume.
Perhaps the most important effect of inequality is on the quality of social relations: that is the key to many of its other effects. The extent of inequality provides the foundations on which social relations are built. As the data on trust, violence, and community life show, narrower income differences produce a better quality of life for everyone.
The material successes of modern societies stand in marked contrast to their social failures. Greater equality is the most important way of turning that failure around, reducing its human costs, and improving the social quality of life – for all of us.
Further Information
If you want to know more about the Trust, a fuller version of this introduction can be obtained by emailing: admin@equalitytrust.org.uk or by writing to: The Coordinator, The Equality Trust, PO Box 937, Bromley BR1 9GW.
If you would like to make a donation to the Trust, please make cheques payable to The Equality Trust.