This is the point made exhaustively by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better For Everyone (2009), whose results are kept updated at the website linked above. For documentation of the examples below, see Chuck Collins, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We can Do About It (2012); Center for Disease Control, Health Disparities and Inequalities Report, 2011 (January 2011); Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate E. Pickett, Income Inequality and Population Health: A Review and Explanation of the Evidence, Social Science and Medicine (2006); Naoki Kondo et al., Income Inequality, Mortality, and Self-rated Health: Meta-analysis of Multi-level Studies, British Medical Journal (2009); Trenton Smith et al, Why the Poor Get Fat: Weight Gain and Economic Insecurity (March 2007). WSU School of Economic Sciences Working Paper No. 2007-16; Marion Devaux and Franco Sassi, Social Inequalities in Obesity and Overweight in 11 OECD Countries, European Journal of Public Health (2011); D. Kim et al, Is Inequality at the Heart of It? Cross-country Associations of Income inequality and Cardiovascular Diseases and Risk Factors, Social Science and Medicine (2008); Avner Offer et al, Obesity under affluence varies by welfare regimes: The effect of fast food, insecurity, and inequality, Economics and Human Biology (2010); Alberto Alesina, Rafael Di Tella, Robert MacCulloch, Inequality and Happiness: are Europeans and Americans Different? Journal of Public Economics 88 (2004); Shigehiro Oishi, Selin Kesebir, and Ed Diener, Income Inequality and Happiness, Psychological Science (2011); Jongmook Choe, Income inequality and crime in the United States, Economics Letters (2008); Heather Ann Thompson, Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History, Journal of American History (2010); Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (Russell Sage, 2008); Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, Incarceration & social inequality, Daedalus (Summer 2010); Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality, Project Syndicate (June 2012).

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