Areas in America with income inequality as low as in Canada still have more stress and poor health because of less available social capital
In the late 1980s, Eastern Bloc countries had lower life expectancy than in every Western European country due to the stress from income inequality, low social cohesion and high crime. Another grim example of how this works is America: enormous wealth, enormous income inequality, high crime, the most heavily armed nation on earth. And markedly low levels of social capital—it is virtually the constitutional right of an American to be mobile and anonymous. Show your independence. Move across the country for any job opportunity. (He lives across the street from his parents? Isn’t that a little, er, stunted?). Get a new accent, get a new culture, get a new name, unlist your phone number, reboot your life. All of which are the antitheses of developing social capital.
This helps to explain something subtle about the health-income inequality relationship. Compare the United States and Canada. As shown, the former has more income inequality and worse health. But restrict your analysis to a subset of atypical American systems chosen to match the low inequality of Canada—and those U.S. cities still have worse health and a steeper SES/health gradient. Some detailed analyses show what this is about: it’s not just that America is a markedly unequal society when it comes to income. It’s that even for the same degree of worsening income inequality, social capital is driven down further in the United States.
Our American credo is that people are willing to tolerate a society with miserably low levels of social capital, so long as there can be massive income inequality…with the hope that they will soon be sitting at the top of this steep pyramid. Over the last quarter-century, poverty and income inequality have steadily risen, and every social capital measure of trust, community participation, and voter participation has declined. And what about American health? We have disparity between the wealth of our nation and the health of our citizens that is also unprecedented. And getting worse.
References
- Sapolsky, Robert. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers Chapter 17. The View from the Bottom (p. 534). New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Psychology / Neuropsychology / Social Psychology /Sociology / Medicine / Politics / Economics Status:☀️