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Will the Broken Society debate remain confined to knife crime and teenage pregnancy?

THE phrase “broken society” evokes all kinds of knotty issues, from so-called sink estates, fatherless households and welfare dependency, to anti-social behaviour, poor public health and knife crime. Whichever of these features most prominently to you, the chances are that you associate the whole idea of social dysfunctionality strongly, if not exclusively, with poverty and poor people.

Nor are you alone in this. In fact, since the Conservative Leader David Cameron popularised the phrase last year, the focus has remained steadfastly on exactly these kinds of issues, and all linked to poverty. The overriding message is straightforward; society is most broken among those for whom opportunity, aspiration and wealth are lowest. The unspoken corollary is that the rest of us are alright and, inasmuch as we experience the ill-effects of the broken society, it is from unwanted effects of the poor.

It is an assumption fulsomely challenged by a genuinely groundbreaking book published earlier this year. In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that the more unequal a society is, the less successful it tends to be. This is not some ideological polemic; Wilkinson and Pickett base their thesis on over 50 person-years of epidemiological research into health inequalities. They argue that while health, life expectancy and other indicators of well-being increase with a country’s wealth there comes a point when the curve levels off, and the simple amassing of additional wealth contributes nothing to quality of life. In most western-style market democracies, including ours, that point has long since been reached.

The conclusion that the poor within society fare worse than the rich is far from groundbreaking. However, what Wilkinson and Pickett succeed in doing is demonstrating that whole populations suffer when the society in which they live is grossly unequal by income. Across just about every index, from mental illness to child welfare, and from violent crime to obesity, the more unequal a given society is, the worse it does overall. It’s worth looking at some of the data, presented here.

This dysfunctionality manifests itself in all kinds of ways. In both the UK and the US, two of the most unequal societies in the western world, the increasing rates of imprisonment are only loosely connected with levels of crime (in the UK crime has fallen while both rates of imprisonment and lengths of sentences have increased). Instead, what we are seeing are societies that increasingly condone harsher punishment.

This may be connected to another characteristic of unequal societies; namely a greater propensity toward violence. Both homicide rates and children’s experiences of conflict rise, more or less steadily, along with income inequality. The reason for this is quite simple; in unequal societies feelings of shame and humiliation are greater as the evidence of gross disparities in quality of life are that much starker. Acts of violence are straightforwardly attempts to ward off these feelings and replace them with feelings of pride. They are, in short, people carrying out their own personal “respect agenda”; pursuits of esteem in a society that otherwise denies them.

But since the have-nots by and large carry out their acts of violence against other have-nots, why should the haves care? The answer is that this is part of a continuum of anxiety and shame. Further towards the top of society, people are less prone to violence, but no less prone to acute anxiety about their status. Unequal societies are riven with worry from top to bottom about our place and status within it. The more unequal the society, the more restive we feel, the fewer people we believe we can trust, the less we like our lives. Not surprisingly, this manifests itself in all manner of further ills, from greater incidences of obesity to increased chance of mental illness. Working harder and earning more will not alleviate this anxiety; if anything it is likely to make it worse. And even those very near the very top are afflicted by the frenetic and self-defeating need to stake their place in society through greater wealth and material well-being. What was the MPs’ expenses scandal if not an attempt by some of our society’s highest earners to placate their own status anxieties?

So inequality is fundamentally a problem for the middle classes and better off as well as the poor. Here then is compelling reason for David Cameron to change both the rhetoric and the focus of his attack on the Broken Society. For now and for as long as his analysis remains about tackling the consequences of poverty, it will remain a project upon which the rest of society and his party will feel they can look dispassionately. And because it is a continuation of Labour’s approach, there is no reason to suggest it will be any more successful. Cameron may have different prescriptions but his underlying belief is that society can become more cohesive while remaining deeply and perhaps increasingly unequal is the same. Cameron, like Labour, would simply focus on tackling the worst and most damaging effects of poverty, and pay no heed to the gap. Yet, as Wilkinson and Pickett demonstrate, it is the gap – and the resentment, impotence, fear and loathing that it generates – that lie at the heart of our society’s dysfunctionality. Poorer people bear much more than their fair share of the ill-effects of this dysfunctionality, but by no means all of it.

Those in the middle and towards the top of the pile may not respond to a Conservative Party committed to a radical and redistributive programme, but they would surely respond well to a programme which, piece by piece, begins to dial out the anxiety, tension and mistrust that is afflicting us all, and that makes us increasingly miserable even as we become increasingly wealthy. To date, Project Cameron has shown itself the supreme master of connecting with voters’ concerns at an emotional level. If he can use these skills to articulate why greater equality itself is in the interests of everyone, he can fulfill his pledge to be as radical a social reformer as Margaret Thatcher was an economic reformer.