In addition to all the other things that wealth inequality is doing—establishing neo-caste systems, eroding mobility, perpetuating oppression, and generally stagnating societal development—Vox is reporting on a new book called
The Health Gap by Michael Marmot that indicates that poverty and inequality themselves can make people sick and die earlier.
Vox reports:
His findings are stunning. Marmot discovered that health and social status are often inextricably linked — even when you control for income, education, and other risk factors. This is true if you look at countries or at cities, or even drill down to the level smaller communities. And the implication of this research is that high levels of inequality can, on their own, make people sick.
Most famously, his Whitehall studies established a link between the relative rank of officers in the British civil service and their risk of disease and death. The higher an officer was ranked, the better his or her health. This was despite the fact that all civil servants were relatively well-off, with similar levels of education. Again, the stratification itself seemed to be the important factor.
One of Marmot's important findings is that both income and place in a hierarchy independent of income affect health. Higher-ranking individuals in the same class as lower-ranking individuals are still healthier on average. Both of these dynamics are important in the United States, where the middle is being stretched out between an increasingly large wealth gap.
What this also means, largely, is that government stimuli and welfare programs designed to reduce inequality might help make health outcomes better, especially for poor, minority, and other disadvantaged populations. This holds some interesting implications for the Affordable Care Act, which functions as both a stimulus and health care outcomes booster for low-income people. While this seems to be a boon to public health, states that have not chosen to expand Medicaid (largely in the Deep South) may set themselves back, creating a further reinforcement of inequality.