Increase Everyone's Income?
OR
Increase Equality?

Forget morality... In a developed market democracy, life expectancy is a function of your postcode
but simply living in a high-income country does not help at all.
What is important for health and happiness is equality of income distribution.

Statistics show that even the upper class is better off if there is more equality in their country.
This is based on publicly available sources compiled by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their book "Spirit Level".
You can download their spreadsheet of many such correlations yourself.

Below is a video of Richard Wilkinson talking about the book and explaining some amazing graphs.




Screenshots from the above video

Health & Wellbeing vs Equality Health & Wellbeing vs Average Income
Health & Wellbeing vs Equality Health & Wellbeing vs Average Income
Mental Health vs Equality
Prisoners vs Equality
Trust vs Equality Trust vs Equality within USA
Homicides vs Equality School Dropouts vs Equality

Alternative Reading

The above study and others are covered in by James C. Riley in his book "Low income, social growth, and good health: a history of twelve countries". You can read the chapter on Japan for free.

More video & mp3's

Click here for a page of multimedia information justifying the Occupy Wall Street movement as it applies to Australia.