“Occupy Wall Street!” “Support
the 99 per cent!” Social and economic inequality has been increasing in most,
if not all, OECD countries since the 1970’s, with the result that the top one per cent of income earners —and even more so, the top .1 and .01 per cent of
earners— have taken home the overwhelming preponderance of growth over the past
generation. (See general articles on the USA and Britain.) Although many scholars, politicians, and organizations (including
the major Quaker service organizations and familiar groups such as England's
Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the secular Equality Trust) have been trying to publicize this issue ever since
it became apparent, others started paying attention in 2011 when loosely
organized groups started “occupying” (i.e., camping out 24/7) in
high-visibility areas like Wall Street and the “City” (the financial district
of London, England). Soon other groups were occupying locations in other cities
around the world, or holding demonstrations, vigils, and marches in support of
greater equality of both opportunity and outcome. This spring, the French
economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital
in the Twenty-First Century, which focuses on wealth and income inequality
in Europe and the USA since the 18th century, has sold out at
amazon.com, where it held the number 1 rank. Not surprisingly, given our long
tradition for social reform, a number of Friends supported the Occupy movement
(indeed, there is a FaceBook page entitled Occupy, Quakers), and some
participated.
I will leave a formal
reply about the Occupy movement to Friends who participated and scholars with
the expertise to evaluate it. What I would like to do, however briefly, is to
consider how Quakers might fit into the broader picture of who has what in the
English-speaking countries most familiar to me (the USA and Canada, and to some
extent the UK and Australia). These are the observations of an armchair
observer who knows much more about Julius Caesar than the Gini coefficient
(which measures the degree of economic inequality in a society), so if I am way
off base, please bear with me.
Because Friends are
such a small percentage of the populations of each of these countries, hard
data are next to impossible to come by, both historically and for the present
day. For example, the Pew surveys on religion in the USA group Friends with
mainline Protestant groups. However, it is my understanding that in the four
countries best known to me, Friends historically were not drawn from the
poorest sectors of society. Basic literacy and numeracy were needed for
contributions to the life of the Monthly Meeting; with the Quaker emphasis on
female participation in Meeting decisions, education was necessary for girls as
well as boys. It is thus not surprising that prosperity followed for some
Friends, and that for others there was tension. For instance, in Colonial
Pennsylvania, the research of Barry Levy (Quakers
and the American Family, 1988) has shown that Quaker young people who
married other Friends and thus stayed with Quakers were better off than the
average; those with fewer means had better luck attracting marriage partners
from outside the Religious Society. In those days, Friends who “married out”
were obligated to leave. Quaker religious leaders apparently knew the
demographics of those forced out, and, at least at that time, preferred to
maintain in-group cohesion at the expense of economic diversity within the Religious
Society. It is not a pretty picture.
In England, Quakers
could not attend university until the early nineteenth century, but a high
level of basic education and in-group cohesiveness fostered an entrepreneurial
culture. With the rise of capitalism came some stunningly successful Quakers
and Quaker families in a variety of countries. Abraham Darby was one of a
number of Quakers and others active at Coalbrookdale (see especially Paul Belford’s 2007 article in IndustrialArchaeology Review, a citation for which I owe his team member Ron Ross).
Barclays and Lloyds banks, some of the great chocolate manufacturers (Cadbury,
Rowntree, and Fry), and Clarks shoes —along with many other businesses— all
have Quaker roots, although they have long since become parts of corporations.
If we had been talking about “the one per cent” or even the “point one per cent”
in Victorian England, Friends would have been reasonably well represented.
Quaker employment
patterns shifted away from big business with the availability of higher
education and nearly universal secondary education. Increasing urbanization and
the shift of unprogrammed Meetings, at least, from an internally cohesive group
connected through intermarriage to one with a large percentage of people
entering and leaving in each generation reinforced these trends, as did Friends’
emphasis (at least in relative terms) on gender equity and social reform. As a
result, we now see Friends in unprogrammed Meetings in a variety of small
businesses and a wide range of professions, especially those that might be
considered altruistic in nature. While these trends have long been apparent
anecdotally, we now have some formal data — two carefully drawn surveys, both
from Britain Yearly Meeting̛— that
confirm them. 58.0 and 68.0 per cent of respondents had obtained at least an
undergraduate degree in the 1990 and 2003 surveys, respectively (Mark S. Carey,
Pink Dandelion, and Rosie Rutherford, “Comparing Two Surveys of Britain Yearly
Meeting: 1990 and 2003,” Quaker Studies
13/2 [2009] p. 241). (Note: Friends from programmed Meetings in the United
States may share some or all of these features, but I have neither the formal
data nor the informal “feel” for those groups of Friends which would allow me
to test this hypothesis.)
Given that people with
better than average access to higher education and/or other kinds of social
capital are more likely to prosper (or at least have a hope of holding their
own) in an increasingly unequal world, how many Friends might be in that lofty
one per cent? This is an unpopular question, theologically and in other
respects. While we believe that talents differ (including, no doubt, the talent
for making and saving money), equality is a fundamental Quaker belief. Add that
to the usual taboo in most English-speaking countries about money and... well,
I might find it easier to get a few Friends to help me update Towards a Quaker View of Sex.
Judging from the
article in Quaker Studies, the two
recent UK surveys did not ask about individual or household incomes. (If they
had, maybe there would not have been a 75 per cent response rate to the
questions.) However, we do know something in general terms about the top one
per cent of wage earners in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom —
and perhaps other countries as well, although I have not looked (I do have to
work tomorrow). The figures from all of the countries are sobering, including Canada, where income inequality is not quite as severe. In terms of Canada, there are some problems with the methodology
(disclaimer: one of the statisticians cited is a family friend and a colleague
of my husband), but by and large Statistics Canada has a reasonable idea of who these high-income taxpayers are. 38.8 per cent are in management; 14.3 are in health; 13.7
in business, finance, and administration; 11 per cent in education, law/social,
and community/government services; and 9.9 per cent in natural sciences.
However, just because
11 per cent of “the one per cent” are educators and another 14.3 per cent are
employed in health care, it does not follow that the converse is true, i.e.,
that 11 per cent of educators and 14.3 per cent of health care workers are be
members of that one per cent. All of these sectors employ vast numbers of
workers, and only a few are part of the crème de la crème. To provide another
example, salaries of educators, civil servants, and those health care workers
who are officially part of the broader public sector in Ontario, Canada's
largest province, are published annually if their income is $100,000 Canadian. Those
who make around the cut-off for the one per cent are a vastly smaller group and
tend to be clustered in a very few areas. (See here for the list published in
March of 2011, which corresponds to the tax year in the 2011 household survey,
and here for the most recent figures.)
Journalists and
statistical organizations have also looked at salaries of many other
professionals. The typical physician in general practice in the USA and Canada
and the typical lawyer are not part of that one per cent, except maybe at the
very bottom end, let alone the nurses, social workers, school teachers, small
business owners, and tradespeople who make up most our membership. (Also, very
often the salaries quoted are averages, and not the median, which is usually
lower.) Thus, while it is impossible to know how many Friends belong to “the
one per cent,” it is a reasonable back-of-the-envelope guess that the number is
probably not much out of proportion to the general population. In terms of that
point one per cent and the zero point one per cent who are the real movers and
shakers, there will be very few Friends.
Does that let us off
the hook, either individually or as a Religious Society? Not at all. First, the
access to education and other forms of social capital available to many Friends
means that the median individual and household income among members and
attenders of unprogrammed Meetings is almost certainly greater than the
national median, and that the poverty rate is lower, although the clustering of
Friends in such fields as education and social work will lower the median
salary. This relatively high level may be especially true of household income,
given the high labor force participation of Quaker women. The improvements in
women’s education and work force participation in two-earner households, from
which many Quaker families have benefited (and which have indeed been necessary
in a period when individual incomes outside of the elite have been stagnant or
declining), have exacerbated the tendency toward economic inequality. These
factors create numerous barriers to outreach and participation; I will discuss my
understanding of them in later posts. (Ethnicity is a confounding factor here
as well; once again, that will be the focus of another post.)
Secondly, the fact
that trends in middle and working-class incomes have been unfavorable will also
increasingly push those already in our midst toward a bimodal distribution of
wealth. The traditional incentives of partial
financial support to attend Quaker gatherings may not do the job as well as
they once did. There may also be a need to see in what ways, if any, tax codes
in various countries might permit Friends Meetings to support young people in
their post-secular education.
Finally, the United
States, Britain, and Australia all have Quaker-affiliated or Quaker-founded
educational institutions and social organizations (e.g., retirement communities
and children's camps) that were either developed during the heyday of Quaker
capitalism or have been established primarily for the needs of those with
above-average incomes. Admittedly, a number of Yearly Meetings also have camps
for young people that cost about the same as those run by the Y or the Scouts, and
Woodbrooke has a huge range of options at different price points, including
some on line; but here I am talking of high-end facilities of various types
that serve a much smaller number of people. Please don’t get me wrong: I am
happy to see the children of high income earners learn Quaker values (they are
vastly preferable to the alternative), I am delighted at an increasing number
of options for retirees, and I am pleased that virtually all of these organizations
are engaged in broadening their base through financial assistance. I am also
aware that many people make enormous sacrifices to be part of these
organizations, and that sometimes they do so because of a dearth of
alternatives. Nevertheless, does the preponderance of high-priced institutions
with “Quaker” as part of their institutional DNA take away some of our energies
from helping those who on the whole have much less social capital and who
desperately need alternatives for education or living? For instance, the Roman
Catholic Church in the United States probably accomplishes significantly more
for the education of disadvantaged young people than we do, on a per capita
basis as well as an absolute one. (Disclaimer: family members have attended
Quaker schools or secular institutions with similar demographics, and my own
undergraduate alma mater, which I attended on financial aid, shares many
features with Quaker ones.)
Meanwhile, my whole
discussion about “the one per cent” is geared to generally wealthy countries
whose citizenry is not representative of the world as a whole. Indeed, Quakers
in developed countries are not representative of Friends in the world as a
whole. Neither education nor income in most of the world is what most readers
of this blog are likely to see around them. Looked at from this perspective,
even if we are not part of a global “one per cent,” we are certainly part of a
cohort of exceptionally well educated and privileged individuals. Other than
getting in line if we want a hard copy of Piketty’s 696-page tome, what are we
going to do about that?
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| Abraham Darby Climbing Rose photographed at our house ©Kristin Lord 1998 |
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