Income Inequality and Health

While most Americans think of poverty in material terms, said the senate’s lone independent, its effects were more insidious and long-lasting.

The U.S. Senate subcommittee on primary health and aging met Wednesday morning to discuss the effects of poverty and stress on children, communities and health in America.

[...]

The effects of poverty on health and learning were much greater in the U.S. than other developed countries that had stronger safety nets, testified Dr. Steven Woolf, director of the Center on Society and Health and professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“Obviously they have poverty in other countries, too, but there appears to be more programming and policies in place in those other countries to buffer the impact of material deprivation on families so that in effect children growing up in poor families in these other countries are more protected from the adverse effects than American children are,” Woolf said.

He also noted a Yale University study that found that other countries spent more on social programs and less on health care than the U.S., yet people in those countries tended to live longer and lead healthier lives.

  Raw Story

Just had a conversation with my sister this morning about how poverty undermines health and the possibility of escaping poverty, and now come across this article. One thing mentioned here that we hadn’t talked about was the influence of the physical environment; i.e. poor people have less access to good air, green space, etc., which also influence both physical and mental health.

Think about it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.