Inequalities in health and illness: social class
Ya-Ciang Lin
149044363
SSC107
University of Sunderland
22/03/2015
Introduction
Social class is based on several elements such as education, income level, occupation
and wealth. There is always a connection between social class and health. Health
standards are straightly linked to social class and the problems are like low income,
unemployment, poor education, poor environment and so on. For example, poor
people with poor education live in a poor environment and working in the poor
condition makes people sicker, furthermore, poor people die earlier than those who
are at the top of social class with rich living condition. Those at the top of the society
are healthier and they even live longer. Wilkinson (1996) shows that countries have
fewer differences between poorest and richest are the healthiest.
What is health?
There are too many ways that people to define health. In the Health and Lifestyles
survey Blaxter (1990a), shows that each person has many different ways to define
health. The definition can be distinguished into positive and negative. For example,
negative definition of health is not having a disease or disability. On the other hand,
