Income inequality is greater in the USA than in the EU

Thanks to the campaign Ask the scientists you asked scientists and Neuron Award laureates about everything that interests you across various fields of science. We bring you the third interview, this time with the sociologist Lucie Kalousová, which you wrote yourselves with your questions.

I reckon, though I may be wrong, that lower income and education have an influence on health too. Because you cannot buy quality food, for instance, even though illnesses do not avoid the rich either. Is that true, or is it otherwise?

You are right. What is interesting about it, though, is that even if we take things like differences in diet or lifestyle into account, more educated and richer people still live longer on average. In the United States, for instance, there is a study showing that only 10 to 25 per cent of the difference in health between the more and the less educated and between the richer and the poor can be explained by differences in smoking, BMI, exercise and drinking alcohol. And how do we explain the rest? Sociologists focus on structural models of the relationships between social position and health. We study, for instance, to what extent the types and conditions of the jobs that people with different levels of education do are responsible for them. In such sociological studies, for example, chronic stress in the course of an ordinary day is measured from saliva samples, which are then analysed further in laboratories and compared.

What are the differences between the USA and the Czech Republic as regards the relationships between social inequalities and the health of the population?

In the United States social inequality is far higher than in the Czech Republic, which in terms of income is one of the least unequal countries in Europe. But the principles of the relationship between social inequalities and health are similar. In both countries there is a clear relationship between social status and health. One point of interest is that less educated people in the United States live to a greater age than less educated people in the Czech Republic, especially men. On the other hand, more educated people in the Czech Republic live somewhat less long than more educated people in the USA. It is an interesting paradox. Given that the USA has an expensive health system that is hard for the poorer to access, we would probably expect the opposite picture, in which less educated Czech men and women would have an advantage over less educated Americans. But that is not the case.

What do you think of the claim that with income groups one assesses in principle where a person ended up and not where they started (if we took people's origins into account, then the USA, for instance, has less income inequality than the EU, because a lot of people there work their way up from poverty to extreme wealth), so that it is very difficult to distinguish cause from correlation?

Income inequality is greater in the USA than in the EU, and so is the correlation between where a person started and where they end up. Some research shows that this correlation has increased still further over the last thirty years. But working one's way up from poverty to extreme wealth is a great rarity everywhere, regardless of which corner of the world a person was born in. Sociologists often compare countries on the basis of the "stickiness" of the lowest and the highest income groups. If the upper groups are very sticky, it means it is unlikely that a person born into the upper group will reach in adulthood an income position lower than their parents had. Stickiness in the low income groups shows itself in that it is unlikely that a person born to poor parents will become significantly richer in the course of their life. In the USA both the bottom and the top income strata are especially sticky compared with other countries. It is harder there to get from the bottom to the top and easier to stay at the top. This type of study is nowadays very often built on tax data or on multigenerational databases of individual and family incomes, so this area is well mapped. We therefore know that the relationship is causal.

Reports are coming from the USA that because of the crisis food banks cannot keep up with supplying those who want free food. Will this crisis lead to a further deepening of the economic and social differences between the richest and the poorest strata of society?

It can be assumed so. People who are better off economically are both less likely to be infected with the virus and to face health consequences, and less likely to lose their jobs in the coming economic crisis. From pandemics that have taken place in the past, however, we know that an increase in social inequality is not always the rule. It may happen, for instance, that the coming economic crisis, if it also hits the traditional middle class hard, will increase the level of solidarity between manual and non-manual workers. An increase in solidarity could lead to increased pressure on the political elites to support social programmes and expand social security, and ultimately to a reduction in social inequality.

Does positive racism belong to social inequality? Or is it an attempt to level out differences in the social sphere by force?

In the Czech Republic, just as in the United States, there are people who are systematically disadvantaged in education, housing, employment and other aspects of everyday life. There is nothing forcible about measures that try to erase at least some of these long-term disadvantages. It is fair. Until we manage to create a society in which nobody is systematically disadvantaged and everyone has the same chance to realise their potential, it is necessary to correct systematic disadvantage institutionally.

A lot of people do not regard sociology as a science. What would you write in defence of your field? Where do you personally see the point of sociology today?

Sociology is concerned with the study of human societies. Probably everyone who looks around them feels a bit like a sociologist. That is probably why sociology gets popularly oversimplified. The truth, though, is that professional sociology has a broad range of methodologies and theoretical orientations that are unknown to the amateur sociologist. Varied methodologies and theories are necessary, because studying people is not remotely simple and requires a creative approach. We cannot shut them in a laboratory, they age slowly and, what is more, they occasionally lie to us. They are far more talkative and moodier than mice, they do not tolerate experiments well, and we cannot force them to take part in studies they do not enjoy. It is no wonder that the well-known American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently said: "In science, when human behaviour enters the equation, things go nonlinear. That's why physics is easy and sociology is hard."

Humour aside. In my view sociology does not need defending. A person who does not know themselves well easily harms themselves unknowingly. That goes doubly for human societies. We need sociology in order to know who we are, what we are like and where we are heading. And once we know that, we can consider whether that is how we want it. Few people today remember that our first president was a sociologist too, and Edvard Beneš lectured on sociology as well.

Read the other interviews with Neuron scientists to whom you put your questions:

Filip Matějka: the moment will come when it is chiefly we who need help from others

Tomáš Mikolov: any technology can be misused

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