Book review: A community psychology perspective (I)

✍ Scribed by George W. Albee

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 90 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1052-9284
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1298(199803/04)8:2<163::aid-casp466>3.0.co;2-e

✦ Synopsis

This book makes it clear that those societies that have the smallest dierences in income between rich and poor (Japan and Sweden are number 1 and number 2) have better health and greater life-expectancy. But health is not all: both are also lower in violent crime. Of those smaller numbers convicted of crime in Japan, fewer than 2% serve jail sentences (compared with 45% in the USA). Japanese police are `teachers in the virtue of the law' (Bayley, 1976, p. 196 as quoted by Wilkinson, p. 169) who want to be known for their warmth, not their strictness! (Not a ®t script for American TV police drama!)

The basic message of the book is simple enough:

. . . life expectancy in dierent countries is dramatically improved where income dierences are smaller. Those societies are more socially cohesive . . . social, rather than material, factors are now the limiting component in the life of developed societies (p. 1).