Income inequality and population health

Papers pp 13, 16, 20, 23 In 1992, the BMJ published a now famous paper showing a strong negative correlation between income inequality and life expectancy. Among nine Western industrialised countries those which had less income inequality seemed to have higher life expectancy.1 A few years later this was replicated in analyses looking at income inequality and mortality in states within the United States—analyses which seemed more secure because of having more and better quality data. 2 3 These findings, which suggested that income inequality is bad for the health of the whole population and not only for those with the lowest incomes, were seen to have important implications. Reducing the inequality would be…