Andrew Bradstock looks at the implications for New Zealand of a new study showing the impact on societies of high levels of economic inequality.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has just published its first report since Helen Clark became administrator.
And it has a challenging message for her native country: we're currently in the big league when it comes to economic inequality.
Miss Clark's report has data on the gap between rich and poor in developed countries, and finds Hong Kong, Singapore and the US to be the most unequal.
But New Zealand is not far behind in sixth place, just ahead of the UK and Australia.
Not that the UNDP is telling us anything the Government hasn't already disclosed.
For example, the 2008 Social Report, published by the Ministry of Social Development, notes New Zealand's low ranking in terms of equality among the OECD countries.
And in 2007, Statistics New Zealand revealed that just over half of the country's total net worth was owned by the top 10% of wealthy individuals, with the poorest half owning just over 5% of the wealth.
What the UNDP and the government reports do not tell us, however, is whether any of this really matters.
Should anyone, other than the innately jealous, bother about the gap between rich and poor?For an answer to that we need to look at another major report on inequality produced this year.
Entitled The Spirit Level, and authored by UK academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, this also looks at wealth distribution across different countries.
Like the report, The Spirit Level places New Zealand among the top six most unequal countries.
But it then goes on to identify a link between levels of inequality and performance across a range of social factors.
The clue to Wilkinson and Pickett's argument is in the subtitle of their book: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.
After years of research they conclude that societies with lower levels of inequality are more cohesive, more trusting, more at ease with themselves and safer to live in.
Using a series of disturbingly similar graphs, Wilkinson and Pickett put the case that countries with high levels of inequality will almost invariably imprison a larger proportion of their population and have lower literacy scores, more obesity, more teenage pregnancies, worse mental health, and shorter average life spans than those with lower levels of inequality.
Inequality, in other words, may be an important factor behind "dysfunctional societies".
A weakness with Wilkinson and Pickett's thesis is that they do not claim a causal link between economic inequality and these social phenomena.
Yet their assertion, that the relationship between inequality and social and health problems in the rich world is too strong to be dismissed as chance, should make us pause for thought.
Only a political or religious fundamentalist would argue there is one cure for all ills.
But if, as Wilkinson and Pickett suggest, even small reductions in inequality can lead to significant improvements in society, might it be worth the Government giving their work serious study?
One can almost hear alarm bells ringing straightaway: won't any scheme to reduce inequality inevitably mean higher taxes, lessening incentive and a return to "big government"?
Not necessarily, for as book points out, societies with the greatest equality have followed different paths to that position.
While Sweden may use redistributive taxes and benefits, and a large welfare state, Japan has a greater equality of market incomes, of earnings before taxes and benefits.
So greater equality can be achieved by both "give" and "take": by ensuring people have more income through, for example, the introduction of a living (rather than "minimum") wage, and welfare rates and pensions which take into account research into minimum income standards; and by changes to the tax system, and incentives to individuals and institutions to be more publicly linked with poverty reduction through, say, corporate social responsibility or philanthropic activity.
More creative approaches could be considered, too, such as tax concessions to encourage democratic employee-ownership.
This could bring the fixing of earning differentials in a business ultimately under democratic control, as well as involve a substantial redistribution of wealth from external shareholders to employees.
Crucially, Wilkinson and Pickett argue that reducing inequality does not just benefit those at the poorer end of the scale.
Of course, in more equal societies there will be fewer poor people, but if these societies are also less angst-ridden, less divided, and generally healthier, safer and more secure in themselves, this benefits all.
The Spirit Level and the UNDP report are already getting talked about in Parliament: only this week Green MP Kennedy Graham asked the prime minister if he was concerned about their findings.
It would take a courageous government to consciously set out to reduce inequality, but in the long term, by treating causes rather than just symptoms, the results could be very worthwhile.
Andrew Bradstock is Howard Paterson professor and director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago.
