Chapter 2 health inequality

• Governments across the world are trying to make us healthier
• We are urged to eat healthily, exercise and avoid drinking too much alcohol
• The most important contributor to our health is not what we do, but who we are and where we are in society
• Job


  Better for your health than no job at all
• Better jobs


  Better for your health
• People who live in deprived areas are likely to live 10 or more years less than those in more affluent areas
• Women are more likely to experience work stress and its associated ill health than men
• People in ethnic minorities may experience poorer working conditions and stress related to prejudice
• Health disparities due to work pressures, unemployment and difficult economic conditions are likely to increase rather than decrease
• The health, as well as the wealth, of the nation may suffer in the next decade as a result of the economic crisis of the late 'noughties' and growing impacts of climate change
• Health differentials


  Differences in health status and life expectancy across different groups
• Where we live can impact on our risk for disease as much, if not more, than how we live
• The biomedical model and even health psychology have typically focused on individual risk factors such as personality, diet and levels of exercise as risk factors for poor health
• There is an emerging body of evidence that environmental and social factors may have an equal, if not greater, influence on our health
• The better-off live longer than the less well off
• People who occupy minority roles in society as a result of ethnic or other factors may experience more illness or die earlier than the majority population
• Findings that women live longer than men now appear to have psychosocial as well as biological explanations
• People in ethnic minorities still tend to be less well off than the majority population and may suffer adverse health effects as a result of both their ethnicity and socioeconomic status
• Almost all the countries whose populations experience the shortest life expectancy are in Africa
• Children in developing countries are 10 times more likely to die before the age of 5 than children in developed countries
• The countries with the best health are scattered around the world
• Australia comes in at 5th place, with a life expectancy of 82.8
• The richest country in the world, the USA, fared rather badly in the WHO rankings, at only 31st place, with a life expectancy of 79.3 years
• Some social groups within the USA, such as Native Americans and the inner-city poor, have health that is more characteristic of developing countries rather than rich industrialised ones
• HIV has contributed to a higher proportion of death and disability to young and middle-aged Americans than in most other industrialised countries
• The USA is one of the leading countries for cancers relating to tobacco use, especially lung cancer and chronic lung disease
• The USA has high levels of violence, especially homicides, compared to other industrialised countries
• What are Communicable diseases?

  Conditions that can be transmitted from one person to another
• More than half (52%) of all deaths in low-income countries in 2015 were caused by communicable diseases, maternal causes and nutritional deficiencies
• Less than 7% of deaths in high-income countries were due to such causes
• Poverty causes around 12 million deaths each year in children under the age of 5 living in the developing world, with the most common causes of death being diarrhoea, dysentery and lower respiratory tract infections
• Major killers among the adult population include being underweight, tuberculosis and malaria
• In the industrialised nations, the key causes of death are chronic disease and abuse of drugs such as tobacco and alcohol
• Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana have HIV infection rates of 22% or higher
• An estimated 13.4 million children and adolescents (0–17 years) worldwide had lost one or both parents to AIDS as of 2015, with more than 80% living in sub-Saharan Africa
• War is also a significant contributor to early mortality in many developing countries
• The richer people within most industrialised countries are likely to live longer than the less well-off and be healthier while alive
• In Australia, people living in the lowest socioeconomic areas generally live about 3 years less, are 1.6 times as likely to have more than one chronic health condition, and are three times as likely to smoke daily than those in the wealthiest areas
• Rates of potentially avoidable deaths in Australia were 1.8 times higher in the lowest socioeconomic areas than in the highest
• If all Australians experienced the same mortality rate as individuals living in the least socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, more than 23 000 deaths could have been avoided between 1998 and 2000