British Medical Bulletin 69:49-60 (2004)
British Medical Bulletin, Vol. 69 © The British Council 2004; all rights reserved
Living inferiority


* Rotherham, South Yorkshire,
Cardenden, Fife and
Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Nottingham Medical School, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK
Correspondence to: Richard Wilkinson, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Nottingham Medical School, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK. E-mail: Richard.Wilkinson@Nottingham.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
During the 1980s, class differences in life expectancy widened dramatically in England and Wales. Figures from the ONS Longitudinal Study, based on a 1% sample of the Census population, show that in the period 19726 life expectancy in Occupational Class I (professional occupations) was 5.5 years longer than in Occupational class V (unskilled manual occupations) for men, and 5.3 years longer for women. By 19926, the class gap had widened to 9.5 years for men and 6.4 years for women1. Why did this happen?
We shall try to answer this question in terms of the social consequences of economic change during the period. An increasing body of research testifies to the importance to health of psychosocial risk factors which hinge particularly on the quality of the social environment and the health impact of chronic stress. These include factors such as social affiliations (both positive and negative) which range from
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