The connection between income inequality and health and social problems is commonly acknowledged, but the exact nature of that link is much harder to explain. A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation asks the big question: does income inequality cause health and social problems? While its authors find little evidence for an entirely affirmative answer, they do note that some research does show a causal relationship and also that income inequalities might be more harmful beyond a certain threshold (following Wilkinson and Pickett's argument in The Spirit Level). While the UK was somewhat below that threshold in the middle of the last century, since the late 1980s we've been well above it. One of the report's authors, Karen Rowlingson, offers a good summary on the LSE blog.
Japan was once the byword for social equality, but since the market liberalisation of the 1990s, things have changed. A conference paper published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (JECH) charts the widening gap between rich and poor and the relationship between the social change of the 1990s and health inequalities in the second millennium.
An essay from Clare Bambra, also in JECH, muses on the role of the welfare state as determinant of health. The essay focuses on the public health "puzzle" evidenced in international studies of health inequalities: why do Scandinavian states, with rather more generous welfare provision, not have the smallest health inequalities?
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