Richard Wilkinson's Income Inequality Hypothesis

Wilkinson’s Income Inequality Hypothesis Analysis Richard Wilkinson opened his Ted talk with the chilling statement, “I think the intuition that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive has been around since before the French Revolution” (Wilkinson). With this opening, he states that his Income Inequality Hypothesis is not new, but the way we can evaluate the evidence has changed. Now, we can look at the evidence behind this hypothesis and directly see what inequality does to our society. Wilkinson explains these dangers in his Income Inequality Hypothesis. Wilkinson’s Income Inequality Hypothesis states that societies with more equal distributions of incomes have better health, fewer social problems, including drug abuse, mental illness, teenage pregnancy, and obesity, etc., and are more cohesive than countries with a wider gap between the rich and poor. The differences in outcomes between more and less equal societies are huge and undeniable. Most of these problems are between countries

First, Richard Wilkinson is a highly respected sociologist and has spent his career studying the relationship between income inequality and social and health outcomes. His hypothesis provides the first comprehensive study and data analysis that shows the relationship between income inequality and social and health outcomes. His hypothesis has been tested by other researchers and most conclude that there is a relationship between income inequality and social outcomes. This realization is revolutionary, and because of Wilkinson’s hypothesis, more research is being done to understand the extent of these relationships and how to use these results to better our societies. Because of Wilkinson’s Income Inequality Hypothesis, it is now understood that there is an undeniable and statistically significant relationship between income inequality and societal and health