Social Justice Is the X Factor in U.S. and EU Politics

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The 2019 edition of the Social Justice Index compiled by Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German nonprofit, provides ample food for thought on why leftist ideas have gained popularity in the U.S. and lost it in Germany. It also goes some way toward explaining why Sweden, long a paragon of social health, has a far-right party contending for first place in national polls.

The index is an effort to bring together all the indicators that reflect how fair and inclusive a nation is for its citizens, ranging from poverty levels for different age groups to environmental data. The indicators are pulled together into six major groups: Poverty prevention, equitable education, labor market access, social inclusion, intergenerational justice and health. The first three categories are given extra weight. All the indicators are transformed into values on a 1-to-10 scale and then aggregated into the final score, which in 2019 ranged from 4.76 (last-place Mexico) to 7.9 (first-place Norway).

The German foundation used to calculate the index for European Union countries only, but this year it has added non-European member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, thus expanding coverage to most of the industrialized world.

As could be expected, Nordic nations make up the top five. The U.S. is among the underachievers, ranked 36th of 41 countries. It ranks behind even crisis-ravaged Greece, and fares only marginally better than Europe's poorest countries, Bulgaria and Romania. 

The U.S. is terrible at reducing poverty: In the last 10 years, the share of its population at risk of poverty, 17.8%, has barely budged, and its performance on intergenerational justice has worsened because of incoherent environmental policies and growing national debt. While the U.S. educational system does reasonably well compared with others, academic results are more dependent on students' socioeconomic status than in 18 other rich countries. The health-care system and social inclusion are below average for the rich nations' club.

The U.S.'s underperformance on most social-justice indicators relative to its wealth is so fundamental that it doesn't just fall behind the Nordics, the universally recognized fairness champions. It's actually doing considerably worse on this scale than some post-Communist nations, such as Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland.

That should explain why socialist ideas have gained currency and why the Democratic Party has shifted noticeably to the left in recent years. The growing acceptance of socialism isn't all emotion and short memory, it's also backed up by comparative data.

On the other hand, Germany, in 10th place, and the U.K., ranked 11th, have made progress on most aspects of social justice over the last 10 years. They aren't higher on the list largely because of intergenerational equity problems: Weak environmental policies and, in the U.K.'s case, high public debt.

The tangible improvements in the last 10 years help explain why the center-left German Social Democrats are struggling to attract voters with their demands for more economic justice. That doesn't feel like a priority to most Germans. They are, however, suitably worried about the environment, which translates into poll success for the Greens.

In the U.K., Jeremy Corbyn's focus on social equity also has failed to help his Labour Party catch up to Boris Johnson's Conservatives in the run-up to next week's election. The country has made so much progress on poverty prevention under Conservative governments that Corbyn's calls for more socialism don't resonate with enough people.

While the Nordic nations remain ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to social justice, one of them, Sweden, shows some worrying signs. Its performance on most indicators is worse than a decade ago, and though Bertelsmann Stiftung doesn't say it in so many words in its report, much of that backsliding can be attributed to the country's inability to cope with a massive influx of immigrants. Of its 10 million residents, 18.5% are foreign-born, but they haven't merged well into the Swedish society. The country ranks 41st among the 41 nations in Bertelsmann Stiftung's index in terms of foreigners' integration into the labor market. This has led to increasing inequality.

The high percentage of young people among immigrants is also driving up youth unemployment and poverty and worsening educational outcomes. Sweden has tried to counter by pumping more money into pre-primary education in the hope of tackling integration problems at an early age, and its famed social safety net largely has held, but Swedes have noticed the strain. That explains the popularity of the far-right Sweden Democrats, vying now with the Social Democrats for the status of the country's most popular party. In Germany, too, the relatively high percentage of unemployed people among the foreign-born has helped the far right gain support.

Voters are highly sensitive to changes in social justice levels. Bertelsmann Stiftung's effort at aggregating the relevant data points provides valuable insights into what drives political change in wealthy nations. Economic growth is important, but social equity now has at least as much to do with how people vote.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

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