Robert Peston falls for the Spirit Level theory of equality

Robert Peston was recently at Lincoln’s Inn for the launch of schools charity Primary Futures, which all sounds very worthy. He started off apologising for looking scruffy, then spoke at some length about the problems he has with private schools. He thinks they are divisive. Plus, they promote inequality and research shows inequality holds back prosperity.

The rest of the evening was your standard charity fare: Nick Clegg’s wife gave a speech, after which Education Minister Nick Boles signalled that everyone could go home. But something has been playing on Mr S’s mind ever since.

The BBC’s most senior economics journalist appears to have fallen for the long-debunked ‘Spirit Level’ theory, based on Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s 2009 tome. The theory – which proposed that greater income equality leads to more harmonious societies – has been widely panned. As the FT reported in 2010:

‘the evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of scatter diagrams, with a regression line drawn through them.