A major new study into the hidden causes of inequality has identified five new ‘unjust beliefs’ it says are to blame.
Social commentator and geographer Danny Dorling claims that in rich countries with plenty of resources ‘hidden and unacknowledged beliefs’ based on elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair are propping up social injustice.
Based on significant academic research across a range of fields, Injustice : why social inequalities persists, argues that, as Beveridge’s five social evils of ignorance, want, idleness, squalor and disease are gradually eradicated, social injustices are now being recreated, renewed and supported by five new sets of unjust beliefs:
Elitism is efficient: ‘educational apartheid’ in the UK has risen as the majority of additional qualifications in recent decades have been awarded to a minority of young adults.
Exclusion is necessary: social segregation has increased as real financial rewards and benefits to the worse off have fallen and the riches of the wealthy have grown.
Prejudice is natural: a wider racism or ‘new social Darwinism’ which sees some people as inherently less deserving and able than those who 'need' great rewards to work.
Greed is good: economic growth is necessary at almost any cost including rising global inequalities and mounting debt.
Despair is inevitable: the rise in depression and anxiety is best understood as a symptom of living in times and places when wide inequalities are seen as acceptable.
Professor Dorling said: ‘These are beliefs which have been publicly condemned as wrong and most individuals would claim not to support them.
‘However, their acceptance by just a few, and the reluctance of many others to confront those few, is crucial to maintaining injustice in such times and lands of plenty.’
His research also identifies new sets of ‘victims’ including a sixth of people in the more unequal rich countries that are 'debarred' or excluded from full membership of society because of poverty and the third of families in Britain, which now contain someone who suffers from depression or a chronic anxiety disorder.Any source
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