Spirit level

     The different social problems that stem from income inequality often, Wilkinson and Pickett show, form circuits or spirals. Babies born to teenage mothers are at greater risk, as they grow up, of educational failure, juvenile crime and becoming teenage parents themselves. In societies with greater income inequality, more people are sent to prison, and less is spent on education and welfare. In Britain the prison population has doubled since 1990; in America it has quadrupled since the late 1970s. American states with a wide gap between rich and poor are likelier to retain the death penalty and to hand out long sentences for minor crimes. California has built only one new college since 1984, but 21 prisons. When we compare it with more or less equal societies numbers change vice verse. And this is only one aspect to consider.