Suggestions to overcome each difficulty of the socio-economic
Answers
A considerable body of evidence has established that individuals of low socioeconomic status are more likely to suffer from disease, to experience loss of functioning, to be cognitively and physically impaired, and to experience higher mortality (Adler et al., 1993, 1994; Marmot et al., 1997b; Preston and Taubman, 1994; Rogers et al., 2000; Williams, 1990). As illustrated in Figure 4-1, this association holds true for nearly all major causes of morbidity, functioning loss, disability, and mortality. This figure uses education as an indicator of socioeconomic status; similar data using income, occupation, or wealth would generally show the same relationships. For instance, Table 4-1 shows that a similar relationship between wealth and self-reported health holds across adult ages.THE HEALTH GRADIENT AND RECIPROCAL CAUSATION
The influence of socioeconomic status on health is assumed to begin in the prenatal environment and continue through life. Parents’ socioeconomic status affects childhood conditions, such as exposure to toxins and infectious agents. These conditions affect health immediately and possibly for years afterwards, the effects being only partly moderated by later changes in status (Blackwell et al., 2000; Hayward et al., 2000; Kuh and Davey-Smith, 1997; Preston et al., 1998). Childhood socioeconomic differences have been recently shown to account for a substantial part of the later mortality gap between blacks and whites (Warner and Hayward, 2002 FIGURE 4-1