Britain: Health inequalities widest since records began in 1921

[Hannah Bell]

A study into Britain’s health inequalities in the form of mortality rates reveals that they are now at the widest since records began in 1921. Entitled “Inequalities in premature mortality in Britain: observational study from 1921 to 2007”, the report was produced by research fellow Bethan Thomas and professors Danny Dorling and George Davey Smith. It is published online in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) (www.bmj.com)...

It has long been accepted within academic circles that unequal mortality rates reflect income inequality and so rise concurrently. Workers living in the poorest districts of Britain have a lower life expectancy than people living in less poor areas, and the gap is wider in Britain than in other comparable nations. Most recent research suggests an inequality of between seven to 10 years from the top 10 percent to the bottom 10 percent of wealthiest districts.

This latest BMJ paper brings that previous research up to date and confirms that mortality inequalities are growing and show no signs of stopping. Although life expectancy continues to grow across all social classes, the gap between the wealthiest and poorest British districts continues to increase.

According to the paper, between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s health inequalities diminished slightly as other concurrent inequalities, most influentially social inequality, lessened...health inequalities between areas “fell throughout the 1960s and early 1970s to reach a minimum around 1969-73 when the best-off 10 percent could ‘only’ expect about a one in six (16.6 percent) lower than average chance of dying before their 65th birthday any year, and the excess mortality of the worst-off 30 percent was ‘just’ a fifth (20 percent) higher at the launch of the research than the average." In the 1970s, however, it began to move in the opposite direction and grow wider as governments squeezed working class living standards, driving up unemployment.

From the 1990s, mortality data and public records show that, when measured by the relative index of inequality, geographical inequalities in age-sex standardised rates of mortality below age 75 have increased every two years from 1990-1 to 2006-7 without exception. Over this same period relative index of inequality increased from 1.61 in 1990-1 to 2.14 in 2006-7.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/heal-a12.shtml