BMJ  2007;334 (3 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39140.571759.43

Editor's Choice

Editor's choice

Our unequal society

Fiona Godlee, editor

fgodlee@bmj.comm

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Back in the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was confidently asserting that there was no such thing as society, researchers ploughing the unfashionable furrow of health inequalities must have despaired of ever being heard. Things have moved on since then, though not perhaps as far as we might have hoped. There is now good evidence, some of it published in the BMJ (1999;319:953) that the healthiest and happiest societies are those with the most equal distribution of income. And compared even with a decade ago, when wider issues such as poverty and housing were excluded from discussion (BMJ 1995;311:1177), governments have become braver about embracing these social issues when talking about health. The 2004 Wanless report showed that the British government is taking seriously the need to take action to reduce health inequalities.

But the reality lags far behind. In 2005 George Davey-Smith and colleagues looked at health inequalities in . . . [Full text of this article]


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