How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone's Well-being

The Inner Level

The essential new book from the authors of the international bestseller The Spirit Level 
 
'Why are people, particularly young people, experiencing increasing levels of mental illness and distress? Highly readable and authoritative, The Inner Level shows clearly how social anxieties and the problems they lead to rise steadily in richer, more unequal societies' Clare Short, The Tablet, Books of the Year 
 
Why is the incidence of mental illness in the UK twice that in Germany? Why are Americans three times more likely than the Dutch to develop gambling problems? Why is child well-being so much worse in New Zealand than Japan? As this groundbreaking study demonstrates, the answer to all these hinges on inequality. 
 
In The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put inequality at the centre of public debate 
by showing conclusively that less-equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across everything 
from education to life expectancy. The Inner Level now explains how inequality affects us individually, 
how it alters how we think, feel and behave. It sets out the overwhelming evidence that material 
inequalities have powerful psychological effects: when the gap between rich and poor increases, so does the tendency to defi ne and value ourselves and others in terms of superiority and inferiority. A deep well of data and analysis is drawn upon to empirically show, for example, that low social status is associated with elevated levels of stress, and how rates of anxiety and depression are intimately related to the inequality which makes that status paramount. 
 
Wilkinson and Pickett describe how these responses to hierarchies evolved, and why the impacts of 
inequality on us are so severe. In doing so, they challenge the conception that humans are innately 
competitive and self-interested. They undermine, too, the idea that inequality is the product of 'natural' differences in individual ability. This book sheds new light on many of the most urgent problems facing societies today, but it is not just an index of our ills. It demonstrates that societies based on fundamental equalities, sharing and reciprocity generate much higher levels of well-being, and lays out the path towards them.

The question of inequality is likely to play a bigger role in the next election than it has for more than a generation. It would be better for all of us if that debate was informed by robust statistical analysis rather than the emotive politics of envy. Any politician wishing to do so would be wise to read Wilkinson and Pickett's books.

It holds the reader's attention by elaborating a phenomenon most will already have observed, and by providing an explanation for the dysfunction they see around them, from the brazen disregard for rules among many corporate and political leaders to the nihilism of drug addicts and school-shooters

Richard Wilkinson (Author) Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research and his work has been published in ten languages. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London. Kate Pickett (Author) Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York, where she leads the Public Health and Society Research Group. 
 
Her landmark book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, co-written with Richard Wilkinson, was an international bestseller, chosen by the Guardian as one of the 100 most influential books of the century and by the New Statesman as a top ten book of the decade. Their follow-up, The Inner Level, shows how societal inequality has similarly profound effects on individual health and wellbeing. 
 
Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Guardian, Nature and New York Times, and she has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches, including at the United Nations, the European Parliament and within UK government departments. 
 
Kate is the co-founder of the Equality Trust, an academic co-director of Health Equity North, and a fellow of the RSA, the UK Faculty of Public Health and the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2023, she received an OBE for services to societal equality.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level, now published in more than twenty languages, has been one of the most influential non-fiction books published in the last decade, showing conclusively how less equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across a whole range of social measures - health, education, levels of violence, life expectancy and child wellbeing - and initiating the enormous public attention now given to the impacts of inequality. 
 
Based on an equally impressive range of data and analysis, The Inner Level now shows the impact inequality has on individuals: how it affects us psychologically, makes social relations more stressful, undermines self-confidence and distorts natural differences in personal abilities. It demonstrates that societies based on fundamental equalities, sharing and reciprocity produce much higher levels of wellbeing than those based on excessive individualism, competitiveness and social aggression. Like its predecessor, The Inner Level will transform ideas of how we should organise the way we live together.

Why Equality is Better for Everyone

The Spirit Level

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone is the most influential and talked-about book on society in the last decade - now updated with a new chapter on the controversy the book has ignited. 
 
 Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Australians? The answer: inequality. 
 
 This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: 
 
How almost everything - from life expectancy to mental illness, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is 
That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off 
How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future 
 
 Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world. 
 
 'A big idea, big enough to change political thinking' - Guardian 
 
 'A remarkable new book ... the implications are profound' - Will Hutton, Observer 
 
 'The evidence is hard to dispute' - Economist 
 
Richard Wilkinson studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London. 
 
Kate Pickett is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. Her work with Richard Wilkinson on The Spirit Level was shortlisted for Research Project of the Year 2009 by the Times Higher Education Supplement, and their book was chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman.

Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. 
 
This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: 
 
- How almost everything - from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is 
- That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off 
- How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future 
 
Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world.

Kate Pickett

Packed with vision, hope and a practical plan – just what these times are crying out for

Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics

An electrifying book: audacious in its range, blistering in its analysis and yet warm and immensely readable

Polly Morland, author of A Fortunate Woman

Genuinely transformative, grounded in rigorous evidence and focused on what really matters. A powerful and deeply humane vision

Daniel Chandler, author of Free and Equal

This is what we need. A clear roadmap that makes the case for how things can be better in achievable and realistic ways

An uplifting vision for solving inequality that benefits everyone

Grounded in practical, tried-and-tested solutions from across the world, The Good Society offers real hope that the problems we face are not insurmountable

Jonathan Aldred, author of License To Be Bad

Optimistic and realistic - a brilliant personal account of what a lifetime of world-leading research on health and well-being shows us is possible

Building on a long, distinguished career as a researcher on the links between ill-health and inequalities, Kate Pickett has brought the threads together in an elegant call for a Good Society

Guy Standing, author of The Politics of Time

Kate Pickett brings much needed intellect, expertise, experience and empathy to the urgent challenges now facing our society

The country desperately needs a new lodestar of hope. The Good Society is the book we have been waiting for

And How We Make It

A fairer, healthier, more caring and sustainable society is entirely within our grasp. This book shows us the way. 
 
How do we ensure that everyone has good health and receives the care they need? 
How do we provide education that allows every child to flourish? 
How do we ensure safety, justice and a sustainable environment for all? 
 
Kate Pickett is a world-leading social scientist whose life’s work has been to identify the underlying causes of society’s most important problems – and the long-term solutions that will actually work. 
 
In this inspiring book, she shows that to make a good society – in which everyone has what they need to be well, and everyone would be better off – we must prioritise the health, care, education and rehabilitation of those who have the least and suffer the most. This means confronting once and for all the fundamental problems of poverty and inequality that lie behind all the others. 
 
Drawing on over three decades of evidence, and an array of proven solutions and real-world success stories from across the globe, The Good Society cuts to the essence of the challenges we face and presents us with a practical, galvanising, perspective-shifting vision for how to tackle them.

Kate Pickett

Praise for The Good Society

Packed with vision, hope and a practical plan – just what these times are crying out for

An electrifying book: audacious in its range, blistering in its analysis and yet warm and immensely readable

Genuinely transformative, grounded in rigorous evidence and focused on what really matters. A powerful and deeply humane vision

Packed with vision, hope and a practical plan – just what these times are crying out for

An electrifying book: audacious in its range, blistering in its analysis and yet warm and immensely readable

Genuinely transformative, grounded in rigorous evidence and focused on what really matters. A powerful and deeply humane vision

Packed with vision, hope and a practical plan – just what these times are crying out for

An electrifying book: audacious in its range, blistering in its analysis and yet warm and immensely readable

Genuinely transformative, grounded in rigorous evidence and focused on what really matters. A powerful and deeply humane vision

Books by Kate Pickett

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter