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Originally published in 1986, this book discusses issues such as social class differences in health; the effect of unemployment on health; the relationship between income and health; how much of the class differences in death rates can be explained in terms of medically recognized factors. Presenting empirical research to resolve these issues, the book takes health to the centre of the political stage and raises fundamental issues about the direction of modern economic and social development and its impact on inequality. As relevant now as when it was first published the book reviews twenty of the most important longitudinal studies in the area of health and class that had been carried out in the UK at the time.
List of contents
1. Socio-economic differences in mortality: interpreting the data on their size and trends R. G Wilkinson 2. Social Inequalities in Mortality: The Social Environment M. G. Marmot 3. Social Class Mortality Differentials: Artefact, Selection or Life Circumstances? A. J. Fox, P. O. Goldblatt and D. R. Jones 4. Serious Illness in Childhood and Its Association with Later-Life Achievement M. E J. Wadsworth 5. Unemployment and Mortality in the OPCS Longitudinal Study K. A. Moser, A. J. Fox, and D. R. Jones 6. Income and Mortality R. G. Wilkinson 7. Inequalities in Health and Health Care: A Research Agenda J. Le Grand 8. Longitudinal Studies in Britain Relevant to Inequalities in Health M. Blaxter.
Summary
Originally published in 1986, this book discusses issues such as social class differences in health; the effect of unemployment on health; the relationship between income and health; how much of the class differences in death rates can be explained in terms of medically recognized factors.
Report
'This book offers a clear and accessible guide to the content and nature of medical geography, but more uniquely provides a much needed critique of some of the assumptions and methods which underlie the research in this field.' Sarah Harvey, Journal of Social Policy.
'In its emphasis on the social and environmental perspective to health this provides a valuable counter-point to technological medicine, the biological approach to health and the anthropocentric viewpoint of the clinical and laboratory approaches of most medical scientists. ' G. Melvyn Howe, The Geographical Journal.
