Following up on my previous post, in case I wasn’t clear (“Are you following me?”), here is a simple graph that argues much more clearly that inequality is making us sicker:
This chart represents diabetes rates by income group (divided simply into thirds; the richest third of the population, the middle third and the poorest third) in the UK and the US. First, note that the poorer you are, the likelier you are to have diabetes. In America, this is not surprising, because our poor lack health care. In the UK, however, the poor has the same health care as the rich (or at least the middle class), and yet they are still more likely to have diabetes, although not nearly as likely as their American counterparts.
But now, compare the poorest Brits to the richest Americans. Lower rates of diabetes! Both groups receive similar quality of health care, so what accounts for it? Surely, it can’t be the average British consumption of fish and chips, lager and fags. What the research is pointing to is a surprising correlation between inequitable income distribution in any given country, and higher rates of disease and death across all income groups.