How does income affect health - Essay Example

This paper discusses how level of income affects health from the narrow perspective of considering its effect to an individual to the broader perspective of considering income inequality as a major determinant of standard of public health. The World Health Organization or WHO (2010) considered income and social status as the number one determinant of health, conveying that higher income and social status are linked to better health where the greater the gap between the richest and poorest people, the greater the differences in health.

People with higher income have the ability to maintain health and wellness as they can afford to buy even the expensive foods (but rich in nutrients), vitamins, and supplements; they can engaged in various recreational activities and sports requiring membership fees, personal equipments, and rental fees of equipments; they can afford to pay private medical or health insurance to cover their medical expenses. Moreover, people with good income can afford education and in school they learn more about health and wellness, thus health awareness is broadened through knowledge.

With educational qualification, finding work is easy, thus increasing one’s source of income and consequently increasing access to health beneficial activities and programs. Many researchers and analysts support the idea that there is a strong direct correlation between level of income and health. According to Levison (2007), “How much money you make helps to determine how healthy you will be… Having higher income levels provides us with access to fitness centers, better choices for our eating patterns, and better medical care.

” Christensen (2010) also supported the idea that money can save lives, as she mentioned that a child living in a developing country may die due to unavailability of antibiotic or incapability to buy medicines, which for many developed