Either way, I'm pretty sure a lot of the negatives associated with inequality come down to our basic biology. Humans, like everything else alive, are hard-wired to reproduce. Reproducing requires social status. Alpha males get to mate a lot; males down the ladder not so much. This means we are genetically bred to try attain social status in the hope of breeding. Nowadays, social status is based heavily on money and the things it buys.
When you see rich people gallivanting in luxury on Entourage and see advertising for stuff aimed at a much wealthier group than one you'll likely ever be a part of, it's stressful. You start thinking you need to be like those people and have that stuff to gain social status in order to reproduce. Doesn't matter if you already have a spouse and can make kids if you want; we're biologically wired to want to move up that ladder.
Small hunter-gatherer groups needed to stay egalitarian or resentment would stress out the group and cause dangerous conflict. Nowadays, seeing rich, high-status people in the media can create this resentment as well. However, you can't do anything against that person to resolve it. Instead, the stress that this creates has to either be internalized or aimed at people you have power over.
Which sucks because this leads to all kinds of mental and physical health issues, crime, drug abuse, people snapping violently on their families and friends, violent fights with strangers triggered in an attempt to not lose face and what social status they do possess.
People confident with their social status are much less likely to have these issues. For the better off male, their social status is secured by their economic station and education, not by notions of toughness or getting involved with crime in order to try and buy stuff that makes them look rich. This also applies to women although generally to a less extreme degree.
Unique to women is the underage pregnancy tendencies. Females from lower socioeconomic levels are much more likely to get teen-pregnant. They also tend to have less education and employment prospects that aren't improved by having the child. However, raising a baby is often seen as something they can do to gain their credentials as a grownup without these.
The real problem with all of this is that it tends towards systemic traps for the poor. Of course, any group on the wealth spectrum will produce some people who don't get jobs or educations or get too into drugs or crime. The issue is that the negative stresses of inequality upon the poor combine with the influence of the people surrounding them who are also damaged by it. If your brother in your rich family is a criminally-inclined drug abuser despite your parents' best efforts, the worst he will likely do is hurt himself and inconvenience everyone else. It's doubtful that your son will take after him with all of the other positively-influencing people in your family available to mimic.
However, if everyone around you is hurting and stressed due to your crappy location in the societal pecking-order, the number of good influences will likely be greatly reduced and your idea of normal may not be super useful for getting out of poverty. This is how ghettos form and why they are so hard to undo.
Anyway, the third reason for avoiding inequality is economic. Simply put, it's bad economics when a lot of people don't have money to buy stuff. Capitalism relies on people buying stuff. My dollar spent is your dollar of profit.
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