The health of poor brits may be worsening with successive generations. A study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, revealed that the health of poor Britishers is worse than people in the same income bracket a century ago. The study, carried out by the University College London, also showed that the gap between the health standards of the poor and the rich is widening. This increases the pressure on the public healthcare system. [1]
These findings are based on the data gathered from the British General Household Survey from 1971 to 2011. More than 200,000 individual records from England, Scotland, and Wales were considered. The author then created three-year snapshots of the health of the nation. Pseudo birth cohorts were estimated by household income tertiles. The author also took into account gender, age-related illnesses. He looked at the differences between the richest and the poorest income groups.
Deteriorating health standards among the poor affect the most vulnerable. Photo Credit: Shutterstock
The author found that absolute inequalities in the treatment of illnesses between the poorest and the richest households have doubled for women and increased by one and a half times for men. The comparison was between those born in 1920-22 and those born in 1968-70. This indicated that inequalities between the rich and the poor have widened in successive cohorts.
