Everyone knows that the poor in rich societies are more likely to have shorter, less healthy, lives, to do less well at school and to end up on the wrong side of the law.  But The Spirit Level goes further than this, to demonstrate for the first time that a whole range of social problems – from poor health to educational failure, from mental illness to obesity, from drug addition to violence, from teenage births to the weakening of community life – share one overwhelming feature: they are all several times more common in more unequal societies.  The evidence that bigger income differences create more problems is conclusive. And rather than affecting just the poor, inequality reduces the quality of life for everyone in less equal.

This groundbreaking work book, based on 30 years research by two of the UK's leading social epidemiologists, provides a powerful and fascinating new perspective on the social failings of rich societies.  In light of their findings government policy will need serious rethinking.