How Capitalism Threatens Your Health - A Terrible Weapon in the Hands of the Rich

by Julian Edney
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This finding was unexpected and earlier researchers published and stood waiting for confirmation. Over ten years, confirmation came. Now more than 30 studies show that if you live in an unequal society, you run the risk of a shorter, unhealthier life and your environment is more violent. In researchers' comparisons of the 50 states, social equality is correlated with life expectancy (9, 10), and the steepness of the inequality predicts homicide rates and a raft of social ills. It's not just poverty (separately, poverty is correlated with poor health).

When you compare nations, on the other hand, richer nations don't have the longer life expectancies; egalitarian nations do. Robert Sapolksy, in his recent Scientific American article (11), teases out the mediating factors: it seems that people in communities having higher 'social capital' (the degree to which residents trust each other and participate in social groups) experience better health, longer lives and less violence. It turns out that communities with high social capital are also more egalitarian.

In short, each community has a social gradient. The steeper the gradient, the more that community is a killer.
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