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Social inequalities cutting life expectancy

28/08/2008

Social inequality is killing people on a "grand scale" in the UK and around the world, a report by the United Nations' World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

The study shows that there is a substantial gap between the life expectancy of the children from affluent backgrounds compared to those born into deprivation.

Poor health and shorter lives of those less well off has reduced the overall life expectancy in the UK to 79 years.

A boy born in the suburb of Calton, Glasgow, for example, can expect to live 28 years less than one raised in the village of Lenzie.

And a child born in Hampstead, London, will, on average, live 11 years longer than one born in St Pancras.

"[The] toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the report claims.

"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale."

The report calls for an end to health inequality around the world, with WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan describing it as "a matter of life and death"

The problem could be eradicated within a generation if worldwide governments worked to end the unjust disparities in social backgrounds leading to shorter lives.

Affordable housing, dietary controls and education are recommended as ways of levelling the playing field.