The most important benefit of the equality effect may be that it leads us to behave in ways that are less environmentally damaging. The evidence for this is only emerging now. We can track the effect across a range of indicators by looking at the 25 richest countries in the world, which have varying levels of inequality. The measure of inequality used here is the ratio between the incomes of the best-off 10 per cent of households and those of the worst-off 10 per cent. Bear in mind that this comparison is different from that on Page 14, which compared the income of the top one per cent with the average income. Bear in mind also that the figures for the very rich are probably an underestimate because so much of their income and wealth is hidden, especially in the most unequal countries. All the same, it is clear that some rich countries are substantially more unequal than others, ranging from the most unequal – the US – to the most equal – Denmark.
So what is the environmental effect of living in a country in which households are economically unequal as compared to living in one in which the economic differences are far smaller? The book from which this magazine theme is drawn is able to track the effect in detail across 11 different indicators but there is only space here to touch briefly on four: waste; meat consumption; CO2 emissions; and transport.
