How is social inequality related to health?
There are close correlations between social inequality and mortality, infant overmortality, lower life expectancy, higher occurrence of mental illness, obesity, homicide, violence, use of illicit drugs, number of people in prisons, lack of trust in other people, teenage pregnancy and less social mobility, among others.
What factors might contribute to health inequalities?
They include income, education, access to green space and healthy food, the work people do and the homes they live in. It is widely recognised that, taken together, these factors are the principal drivers of how healthy people are, and that inequalities in these factors are a fundamental cause of health inequalities.
What is natural or social selection?
Social selection, or the idea that an individual’s health can influence their social mobility and, hence, their position in the social hierarchy, has been suggested as an important element in the process which produces social class differences in health.
How does social class lead to inequalities in health?
People in lower socio-economic groups are more likely to have long-term health conditions, and these conditions tend to be more severe than those experienced by people in higher socio-economic groups.
How do health inequalities impact health?
Health inequalities can manifest in a number of ways – life expectancy, avoidable mortality, long-term health conditions, and the prevalence of mental ill-health.
What is meant by health inequality?
Health inequalities are the unjust and avoidable differences in people’s health across the population and between specific population groups. Some authors, particularly from North America, use ‘inequalities’ to denote differences between groups and ‘inequities’ to denote unjust differences between groups.
What is health inequalities in sociology?
What is the difference between natural selection and social selection?
Answer. Social selection is a mode of natural selection based on reproductive transactions and a two tiered approach to evolution and the development of social behavior. The two tiers of the theory are behavioral and population genetic.
What does social selection mean in sociology?
Definition of social selection : the differential action of social conditions or agencies on the longevity and reproductive rates of individuals and strains in the population war is a factor in social selection.
How social inequality may impact on health and illness?
Inequalities in health related to social deprivation include: Adverse effects on many aspects of health, including life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, infant mortality, cancer and chronic disease outcomes, and pregnancy complications.
What is health inequality in sociology?
What are the 5 types of social inequality?
There are five systems or types of social inequality: wealth inequality, treatment and responsibility inequality, political inequality, life inequality, and membership inequality. Political inequality is the difference brought about by the ability to access governmental resources which therefore have no civic equality.
What are the theories of health inequalities?
Cultural and behavioural theories suggest that differences in the prevalence of behaviours such as smoking, alcohol consumption, illicit drug-taking, diet and physical activity between groups, or differences in the dominant cultures between groups, are fundamental causes of health inequalities.
What is an example of social selection?
For example, animals have genetics which determine reaction to potential foraging stimuli, but only search for the stimuli at certain times of day due to social systems. Therefore, social systems would be selected for which optimize behaviors such as foraging and mate selection.
Does health selection explain health inequality?
One possible explanation of health inequality is health selection: in other words people with poor health move down the social hierarchy. This study started with the conceptual distinction between two types of health selection studies.
Are there social inequalities in health?
The existence of social inequalities in health is well established. The Black report described three causal pathways for social inequalities in health: (1) materialist or structuralist explanations (social causation), (2) cultural-behavioural explanations, and (3) theories of natural and social selection (health selection) [Black et al, 1982].
Is there anything natural about class inequalities in health?
6. 71 This feature of contemporary trends suggests that there is nothing natural about class inequalities in health. Men and women in social class V do not die before their fellow human beings in social class I as a matter of biological fate.
What is the natural selection theory of Health?
Natural selection emphasizes the innate part or genetic component of ability, which is assumed to decide future success in socioeconomic position. This concept has often been connected with the health selection hypothesis, where health is assumed to carry little social aetiology.