INEQUALITIES IN HEALTH
Different social groups have different rates of illnesses plus health chanced and care.
MEASURING HEALTH INEQUALITIES
- Mortality (death) can be calculated for different age groups and expressed as life expectancy or deaths per thousand.
- Morbidity rates, are how frequently diseases occur in different social groups.
- The Black Report (1980) linked occupational classes and health, and concluded that income was the major cause of a shorter life and higher risk of illness.
MATERIAL DEPRIVATION AND HEALTH
- Townsend, in the black report, said material deprivation was the most significant cause of health inequalities. Later he argued it's inequality itself.
- Bad housing also linked to stress, respiratory problems and diseases. Street sleeping also means a shorter life.
- Unemployment correlates with stress-related disease, suicide, drinking, smoking and poor diet. Civil servants on low incomes or people who lost their jobs had worse diets. Working conditions can also lead to poor health.
CULTURAL DEPRIVATION AND HEALTH
It seems to blame ill health on the victim. Disease is blamed on poor people choosing an unhealthy diet..
Critics of the view support the material deprivation argument. Critics question the evaluation of culture, which depends on time, place and power. What is seen as an unhealthy diet may depend on who eats it.
THE ARTEFACT EXPLANATION
Critics of the view that there is a relationship between social class and health. The apparent inequalities are a result of the way in which class is defined and also of the way health is measured. In particular, changes in occupational structure led to the shrinking of the number of unskilled manual workers. These tend to be older anyway??
THE SELECT EXPLANATION
- Agrees that social class and health are related. But causation is reversed. I.e. ill health causes low status, unhealthy people disadvantaged at school etc.
- Critisisms of this view usually based on longitudinal surveys which suggest that ill health is rarely a cause of downward mobility.
ETHNICITY AND HEALTH
- Some minorities overrepresented in lower social classes and the unemployed. Differences in health may disappear when this difference factored out.
- Different ethnic groups have different patterns of health, eg. black less lung disease, but more heart and accident. Irish more likely to die than those from new commonwealth.
CONCLUSION
Inequalities despite half a century of NHS. Political views influence choice of explanations. Materialist theories favoured by left, remedy is reduce inequality borne by rich. The right favour cultural theories, change the lifestyle of the working class and poor.
Extra Information
The distinction between material and cultural factors can also be used to answer questions on poverty and educational success.
Once meat was for rich, but now it's seen as less healthy. These things change.
This question requires consideration of both the social definition and the social distribution of health. Mention ethnicity, gender as well as social class when discussing distribution.