I've written before on the correlation between religion and income inequality. I've also written on the correlation between religion and poor health. As it turns out, there's also a strong correlation between income inequality and poor health -- even for those at the top of the economic ladder. So it sounds like all three phenomena are connected in some way.
But what's the relationship? Is anything the cause of the others, or is there a feedback-loop that exacerbates all of them once it gets started?
Would you trade a shorter lifespan for a much higher level of wealth? Most people would say no, yet that is precisely the effect that the redesigning of economic arrangements to serve the needs at the very top is producing. Highly unequal societies are unhealthy for their members, even members of the highest strata. Not only do these societies score worse on all sorts of indicators of social well-being, but they exert a toll even on the rich. Not only do the plutocrats have less fun, but a number of studies have found that income inequality lowers the life expectancy even of the rich. As Micheal Prowse explained in the Financial Times:
Those who would deny a link between health and inequality must first grapple with the following paradox. There is a strong relationship between income and health within countries. In any nation you will find that people on high incomes tend to live longer and have fewer chronic illnesses than people on low incomes.
Yet, if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and health largely disintegrates. Rich Americans, for instance, are healthier on average than poor Americans, as measured by life expectancy. But, although the US is a much richer country than, say, Greece, Americans on average have a lower life expectancy than Greeks. More income, it seems, gives you a health advantage with respect to your fellow citizens, but not with respect to people living in other countries....
Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel 'in control' in their work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts. Economically unequal societies tend to do poorly in all three respects: they tend to be characterised by big status differences, by big differences in people's sense of control and by low levels of civic participation....
Unequal societies, in other words, will remain unhealthy societies - and also unhappy societies - no matter how wealthy they become. Their advocates - those who see no reason whatever to curb ever-widening income differentials - have a lot of explaining to do.
It's easy to see how "big status differences" alone have an impact. The wider income differentials are, the less people mix across income lines, and the more opportunities there are for stratification within income groups.Thus a decline in income can easily put one in the position of suddenly not being able to participate fully or at all in one's former social cohort (what do you give up, the country club membership? the kids' private schools? the charities on which you give enough to be on special committees?). And lose enough of these activities that have a steep cost of entry but are part of your social life, and you lose a lot of your supposed friends. Making new friends over the age of 35 is not easy.
So a perceived threat to one's income is much more serious business to the well-off than it might seem to those on the other side of the looking glass. Loss of social position is a fraught business indeed.
Source: Salon
On the one hand, economic inequality translates into political inequality -- there's nowhere now or in the past where there have been high levels of the former but low levels of the latter. Money is power. Thus when religion correlates with high levels of economic inequality, it also correlates with high levels of political inequality. If religion is feeding economic inequality, then it's also feeding political inequality.
On the other hand, people are healthier and happier when they have a network of close friends -- and it really doesn't matter whether that network is at a church or elsewhere. How often you go to church is irrelevant; all that matters is having people there you consider close friends. The church is irrelevant; it's the friends who are relevant.
Economic and political inequality, though, create fragmentation in social networks. This may cause people to seek out the benefits of social networks more diligently, which might mean going to church more -- or even start going to church again after having stopped.
So it seems to me that economic inequality is likely the starting point, even if the other factors create a feedback loop that exacerbates every point in the process over and over. What do you think?
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