Social Health Inequalities - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages But despite all measures taken by the Government and the supported agencies, the problem of health inequalities has still a foot hold with widening of gap over general improvement between the people in advantaged and disadvantaged groups (Mielck & Pavis). Those in the disadvantaged groups have to see the least or less improvement in the over all health condition. They are more likely to suffer from diseases and poor health condition and expected to die earlier than the rest of the population. The reasons behind this condition of these people can be linked to a number of circumstances which includes their social and demographic conditions like educational improvement, occupation, and annual income, quality of the dwelling place, gender and finally ethnicity. Apart from these basic factors, health of the disadvantaged group is also dependent on their living habits which includes smoking, drinking, diet and other risk factors which indirectly or directly have an influence over things like life and death (Grahm & Kelly).
If we look into the society of a single place or a number of societies in the whole, we will find that each of them has been stratified along cultural, religious or economic lines. The health and wellbeing of a person is very much a multiple of the three factors mentioned before. The same can be said about some diseases. Let us consider tuberculosis, this disease is very common among people in the lower income group. Even though our physical condition like height, built etc. are genetic in nature but still the over all health condition is dependent on lots of external factors. The general factors begin with Individual Life style factors then social and community networks and finally general socio-economic, cultural and environmental context. These factors can further be given specific identification i.e, education, work environment, living and working conditions, employment status, water and sanitation, health care services and finally housing and food habits. These are all the different determinants of health (Grahm & Kelly).
Now looking into the health condition of Britain with above mentioned factors, the social classes which can be said to be at the receiving end of the poor health condition are the class IV and class V. These classes comprise of people who are either partially skilled or unskilled and are manually contributing to the economy. The inequality is very much visible through the statistics related to the mortality. The average life expectancy among male in the social class I is around 5.2 yrs more than that from the social class V. In case of females this difference is somewhat less and the ladies from social class I enjoy a better life expectancy of around 3.4 yrs in comparison to that of social class V. The ill health scenario of the lower class pushes people to go down the occupational ladder and people finally get jobs with less-well paid jobs and consequently the social status and class sees a continuous fall on the health status. Individuals from the lower socio-economic groups have often got influenced by dominant values which have crept in their class for centuries. The inclination of individuals to co-opt according to the social class has often promoted these individuals to adopt lifestyles which may cause harmful effects. They are subjected more towards excessive alcohol intake, smoking and ...Download file to see next pagesRead More