more equal societies linked to more well-being, social trust, and healthier democracies
June Zaccone
Why Public Policy’s Core Value Should Be Equality, Mark Glick, Gabriel Lozada, and Darren Bush 5/18/26
Equality runs deeper than economics textbooks or policy fashions suggest. Across disciplines, evidence increasingly links more equal societies to stronger well-being, greater social trust, and healthier democracies, challenging the assumption that fairness must come at the expense of prosperity or economic dynamism.
Our new INET Working Paper argues that equality—particularly equality of opportunity—should serve as the primary goal of public policy. Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, moral philosophy, epidemiology, and economic history, we show that human beings are hardwired for fairness and that societies marked by high inequality generate measurably less well-being. We reject the long-standing economic claim that equality comes at the expense of efficiency, showing instead that more egalitarian societies often perform better than unequal ones.....
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