Knowra Health inequality Health inequality Health inequality is a measurable difference in health status or outcomes between individuals or groups. Such differences may reflect biology, chance, behavior, or social conditions.
Health status : A person’s or population’s level of health, assessed through indicators such as illness, functioning, and well-being. Differences in health status are one direct form of health inequality.
Social gradient in health : The stepwise association between social position and health across the population. It shows inequality as a graded pattern, not only a gap between the poorest and richest.
Life expectancy : The average number of years a person is expected to live under specified mortality conditions. Comparing life expectancy across groups summarizes differences in mortality over a lifetime.
Black Report : A 1980 British government report documenting persistent social-class inequalities in health. It challenged the idea that universal healthcare had eliminated class differences in health.
Health outcome : A change in health resulting from disease, treatment, behavior, or other influences. Comparing outcomes such as survival or disease rates makes inequalities measurable.
Health-related social mobility : Movement between social positions that is associated with health, or changes in social position caused by health. It helps distinguish social conditions shaping health from health shaping social position.
Infant mortality : The death of an infant before reaching one year of age, commonly measured as a population rate. Its group differences reveal inequalities in early-life health and living conditions.
Whitehall studies : A series of studies of British civil servants linking employment grade to health and mortality. They documented a health gradient even within a relatively secure occupational population.
Health equity : The absence of unfair, avoidable, or remediable differences in health among population groups. It adds a judgment about fairness that the descriptive term inequality does not itself contain.
Fundamental cause theory : A theory that social conditions sustain health inequalities by shaping access to resources that prevent disease. It explains why health gaps can persist even as diseases and treatments change.
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