9 - Society and Health Inequalities

Summary

Britain is not a good place to be poor. That has become even more true over the last fourteen years. Our justification for that statement is that, in Britain, the health of the poorest people, always lower than that of the average person, declined since 2010. Regional inequalities in health also increased with the ‘Red Wall’ north falling further behind. There has also been stagnation in the UK’s average life expectancy – and we have dropped down the international rankings. Please let the implications sink in: the health of the poorest people and places got worse; life expectancy went down; living with illness went up; and thousands of families lost loved ones before their time. It is an unprecedented calamity.