Rich and poor gap is mirrored in health inequalities, festival told

Social inequalities in income have been matched in recent years by inequalities in health. As the gap between rich and poor widens, the gap between health status also grows, the Festival of Science heard.

Most social policy in Britain and many European countries is directed towards tackling poverty, not inequality. Yet the inequalities are a recurring theme, according to Prof David Donnison, who addressed a session on inequality. "We reinvent poverty in different forms in each generation," he said.

"The sharpest increase in inequality occurred in the mid1980s," Prof Donnison said. Tax cuts combined with cuts in benefits helped to open this gap. The issue had to be addressed, he said, either by job creation programmes or we "face the redistributive aspect of taxation."

The last 30 years had seen a gulf open up between the haves and have-nots, stated Prof Ken Judge of the University of Glasgow. "The question is, is there a connection between the rise in economic inequalities and the health inequalities?" he said.

While one could question whether the issue was poverty or the distribution of income, "the fundamental problem is the small number of people who experience persistent poverty over years". Society and governments must "do something dramatic" for those who experience poverty over years to improve their life chances, he added.

Mr David Webster of Glasgow City Council examined inequalities in the labour market, identifying what he said was a major discrepancy between the official unemployment figures and the actual figures.

"The problem of unemployment in the country is worse and more concentrated than reported," he stated. Unemployment was highly localised in certain regions, particularly in the industrial north-west. "They underestimate unemployment in the cities and overstate it in the suburbs. That demonstrates the geography of the problem."