This article develops a comprehensive and theoretically integrated account of equality, justice, reciprocity, and their consequences for social life, organizational structures, and human health. Drawing strictly on the provided philosophical, sociological, and organizational health psychology literature, the paper brings into dialogue normative political philosophy with empirical research on organizational justice and effort–reward imbalance. The central argument is that equality is not merely a distributive ideal but a relational and institutional achievement that shapes moral standing, epistemic recognition, social cooperation, and embodied well-being. Beginning with philosophical debates on equality, responsibility, moral harm, and the non-identity problem, the article situates justice as a condition of social relations rather than a purely outcome-based metric. It then examines migration, settler colonial expansion, and global labor mobility as structural contexts in which equality and injustice are historically produced and reproduced. The analysis proceeds to organizational life, where theories of reciprocity, equity, procedural justice, and relational justice are examined in depth and linked to robust evidence on cardiovascular disease, mental health outcomes, and mortality. By synthesizing these domains, the article demonstrates that injustice operates simultaneously at moral, social, epistemic, and physiological levels. The discussion highlights how organizational injustice and effort–reward imbalance function as complementary stressors rooted in violated norms of reciprocity and respect. The article concludes by arguing that policy responses must move beyond narrow economic incentives toward institutional designs that uphold dignity, voice, and fair recognition as prerequisites for both social equality and population health.
