From Top to Bottom
This article first appeared in the New Statesman's 'Ideas Corner', 10 July 2006.
After nearly a decade of government by a party whose belief in equality
was once taken as axiomatic, its feelings are ambivalent and the
figures are ambiguous. The incomes of the poorest fifth of the
population have risen by 21 per cent since 1997, according to the DWP’s
Households Below Average Income survey, while those of the richest
fifth have increased by 17 per cent. But the top fifth still enjoys
incomes almost four times higher than those obtained by the bottom
fifth.
So where,
apart from the top end of the EU inequality league, does this leave us?
Liberty and fraternity have held their self-evident value, but the
value of equality has become elusive. The Chancellor’s concern to
alleviate the lot of the poorest is consistent with a functional view
of inequality, as an indicator of how many people are struggling to
meet basic needs. Once they have been “lifted out of poverty”, their
position relative to the rest of society is no longer a problem. As
long as the income of the poorest is adequate in absolute terms, it
does not matter how many times more the richest are paid. Indeed, their
gain may be welcomed as a sign that they are realising their potential.
Critics object that exaggerated rewards make a mockery of equality of
opportunity by creating barriers of capital – financial and social –
that restrict admission to many parts of the elite. This argument
reasserts the values of post-war social democracy, with its confidence
that the broad mass of people are not so limited in potential as to
make a mockery of equality of worth. It also reminds us that equality
is the distinguishing value of the left. People who talk about ‘the
left’ while overlooking equality are actually talking about colourful
varieties of liberalism.
Social democracy saw society as a whole. Its project was not simply to
alleviate poverty, but to promote solidarity. Such ideas persist in the
widespread feeling that outrageous fortunes are grotesque and
inequalities mar the quality of social relations. What this intuition
lacks in ideological currency it more than makes up for in empirical
evidence. As Richard Wilkinson records in his book The Impact of Inequality, study
after study has found an association between income inequalities and
murder rates. Studies of Whitehall civil servants found a steady
gradient of mortality in which professional-grade staff were twice and
the lowest grades three times as likely to die as the most senior
ranks. This is an effect of hierarchy, not poverty or smoking or diet.
The
implication of such findings is that reducing inequalities would make
individuals and societies healthier and happier. The evidence suggests
that equality is indeed a social good, like liberty and fraternity.
Like liberty, it cannot be absolute, but is fundamental to the creation
of a good society. It’s not just a matter of opportunity or worth or
even outcome. It’s more important than that.