This groundbreaking work based on thirty years’ research will force governments to seriously rethink their policies towards social deprivation, crime, healthcare and education

This new book by Richard Wilkinson (one of Britain’s leading social epidemiologists) and Kate Pickett will be the first to show that it isn’t absolute levels of poverty which affect population health and crime rates, but relative levels within a given society, and that those societies which are less equal, i.e. have the greatest disparities of income, are those whose citizens do very much less well according to a whole range of measures— and that this is true for the rich members of those unequal societies as well as the poor.