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Showing posts with the label socio-economic ineqaulity

Your Health Status Has a Lot to Do with Status and Money

Robert Sapolsky on Socio-Economic Inequality: The Haves and Have Nots  Summary: People have known for a long time that socioeconomic status correlates with all sorts of measures of health.  In the United States, you look at the five percent wealthiest and the five percent poorest and there is a 25-year difference in life expectancy . That is dramatic, and you find that in every westernized society. [But] not as extreme as in the US but it is there.  There was a simple explanation that poor people cannot afford to go to the doctor, but if you look at countries with universal health care and there is that same relationship between economic status and health. So, then you say poor people are living next door to toxic waste dumps they're living in dangerous neighborhoods they don't have the money to go to health clubs they don't have the money to buy healthy foods.  If you do careful studies and lifestyle risk factors and protective factors only explain about one-third of the