A 2009 book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett made an interesting link between income inequality and the happiness and health of a society. The thesis argues that there is a correlation between the width of the income gap and societal factors such as life expectancy, obesity rate, murder rates, and prison population.

The following infographic, published by the New Statesman, which compares the latest data of 6 countries, Sweden, Japan, Germany, France, the UK and the US, confirms, in a striking way, what the price of inequality is.