dr. wilkinson has helped break exciting new ground on the impact of the income gaps on our health and life spans. his dramatic work has shown people and deeply on equal societies, be they poor, middle class or affluent live shorter on healthy lives than their counterparts and societies with narrow gaps between the rich and everyone else. .. >> that intuition and is more true than we ever imagined. with another society you may feel difference with that for what we have to deal with in our everyday lives. but the difference of inequality of different democracies in has the quality of our lives. before i take you through that day negative i would just clear up one thing. the title of our book, at "the spirit level" i think many americans do not know what we means. in britain, it has to do with the social gradient and the inequalities. we have graphs and different sloping lines that is the idea of "the spirit level." what i want to start with, is the extraordinary contrast between our societies and what it means between the rich developed societies. almost everything we say this evening is abo