Community Assembly East Arbourthorne, Darnall, Manor Castle and Richmond Wards Health Effects of Inequalities and Air Pollution Air Quality Some Health Trends Sheffield Neighbourhoods Information System (SNIS) Prepared by Barbara Rimmington East End Quality of Life Initiative 10 Montgomery Terrace Road Sheffield S6 3BU Tel. 0114 2859931 Fax 0114 2787173 Ass7HealthAir 1 Email
[email protected] April 2009 Health Effects of Inequality ... health disparities are not simply a contrast between the ill-health of the poor and the better health of everybody else. Instead, they run right across society so that even the reasonably well-off have shorter lives than the very rich. Likewise, the benefits of greater equality spread right across society, improving health for everyone – not just those at the bottom. In other words, at almost any level of income, it’s better to live in a more equal place (p84) ... in the course of our research we became aware that almost all problems which are more common at the bottom of the social ladder are more common in more unequal societies. It is not just ill-health and violence, but also, we will show in later chapters, a host of other social problems. Almost all of them contribute to the widespread concern that modern societies are, despite their affluence, social failures. To see whether these problems were more common in more unequal countries, we collected internationally comparable data on health and as many social problems as we could find reliable figures for. The list we ended up with included: Level of trust Mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction) Life expectancy and infant mortality Obesity Children’s educational performance The Spirit Level: Teenage births Homicides why more equal Imprisonment rates societies almost Social mobility (pp18-19) always do better, by Richard Wilkinson If you want to know why one country does better or worse than another, the first thing to look at is the and Kate Pickett.