One reason Japan is a comfortable place to live

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

If you live in Britain, it's not good news that the gap between rich and poor has widened under the present Labor government. In a new book (The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better) Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that income inequality in a society undermines the health and wellbeing of its members. And not just the less fortunate. In a Sunday Times review of the book, John Carey sums up the argument:

It is not only the poor who suffer from the effects of inequality, but the majority of the population.... One explanation... is that inequality increases stress right across society, not just among the least advantaged.... Chronic stress affects the neural system and in turn the immune system. When stressed, we are more prone to depression and anxiety, and more likely to develop a host of bodily ills including heart disease, obesity, drug addiction, liability to infection and rapid ageing.

Societies where incomes are relatively equal have low levels of stress and high levels of trust, so that people feel secure and see others as co-operative. In unequal societies, by contrast, the rich suffer from fear of the poor, while those lower down the social order experience status anxiety, looking upon those who are more successful with bitterness and upon themselves with shame.... Status anxiety and how we respond to it are basic, it seems, to our animal natures....

In... countries where there is a big gap between the incomes of rich and poor, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity and teenage pregnancy are more common, the homicide rate is higher, life expectancy is shorter, and children’s educational performance and literacy scores are worse. The Scandinavian countries and Japan consistently come at the positive end of this spectrum. They have the smallest differences between higher and lower incomes.... The countries with the widest gulf between rich and poor, and the highest incidence of most health and social problems, are Britain, America and Portugal."

US Income Distribution 1947-2007 (Alan De Smet, Wikimedia Commons)

In Japan, too, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Politicians need to know that, in Carey's words, "By reducing income inequality, they can improve the health and wellbeing of the whole population." To help us keep abreast of this important topic, the authors of The Spirit Level have set up a trust and website. I've bookmarked it.

--Julian

Comments

[Levi Stahl]

[this is good] When I vacationed in Japan back in February, I was astonished by a lot of aspects of life in Tokyo that were glaringly different from life in U.S. cities--the insanely busy and (seemingly) successful retail environment, the decorum on the trains, the general lack of homeless/schizophrenic people obviously suffering on the streets--and while I know that a lot of social and cultural factors play into each of those, I couldn't help but interpret all of them through a lens of generally shared prosperity, the sense that America's willingness to tolerate absurdly high levels of poverty is the primary (barely beating out low-level, but powerful, racism) driver of the problems we perpetually face in our cities. Being confronted with a culture where rich and poor are far, far closer, and where almost everyone (I realize I risk over-praising and valorizing Japan here) has a believable shot at being part of middle-class society was a real eye-opener.

[Only a Blockhead]

Many thanks for your observations.

"...where almost everyone has a believable shot at being part of the middle-class society..."

Or already believes themselves a part of it. I've added a link near the end of the post (about rising Japanese income inequality) that says, "just about everyone considers themselves middle class.... 'There is an expression in Japanese, ichioku-sohchu-ryu, which... means... 'a nation of middle-class people,' "

Maybe this mental attitude--supported by equitable pay--is why Japanese people working in what other cultures would consider menial or undesirable jobs don't have the status anxiety that "The Spirit Level" notes in more income-unequal countries. Most everyone, no matter their job, seems to have an ordinary pride in their work.

--Julian