Mind the Gap : An Evolutionary View of Health and Ineqality

Inequality kills. Both rich and poor die younger in countries with the greatest inequalities in income. Countries like the United States with big gaps between rich and poor have higher death rates than those with smaller gaps such as Sweden and Japan. Why? In Mind the Gap, Richard Wilkinson provides a novel Darwinian approach to this question. He points out that inequality is new to our species: in our two-million-year history, human societies became hierarchical only about ten thousand years ago. Because our minds and bodies are adapted to a more egalitarian life, today’s hierarchical structures may be considered unnatural. To people at the bottom of the heap, the world seems hostile and the stress is harmful. If you’re not in control, you’re at risk. This is a penetrating analysis of patterns of health and disease that has implications for social policy. Wilkinson concludes that rather than relying on more police, prisons, social workers or doctors, we must tackle the corrosive social effects of income differences at root. Darwinism Today series The application of Darwinian ideas to social and political thinking is one of the most controversial intellectual developments of our time, stirring up fierce debate among a wide range of people including scientists, social scientists, journalists, economists, psychiatrists, philosophers and lawyers. Darwinism Today is a series of short books that introduces readers to the cutting edge of these debates. Written by leading Darwinian scholars, the books show how issues as disparate as the nature of aggression and the definition of female beauty can be illuminated in unexpected ways by recent advances in evolutionary biology, and reveal the implications of such findings for society.