LMS film Talking Points: Why are inequalities in health greater now than at any times since the 1920s?

On Tuesday the 10th of February Leeds Media Services filmed "Why are inequalities in health greater now than at any times since the 1920s?" part of the talking Points series of lectures organised by The Yorkshire and Humber Teaching Public Health Network (YHTPHN).

The third in the Talking Points series was given by Professor Danny Dorling from University of Sheffield.  Danny Dorling's extensive works take consideration of a wealth of data and statistics and are used to provide an exceptional description of poverty within the UK.  He presents these with passion and uses issues to describe issues that matter.

"He has uncovered evidence that the government would perhaps prefer stays buried: that Labour has presided over an era of unprecedented inequality widening and declining social mobility.

Dorling has demonstrated that where a person is born remains the primary determinant of their status, health and wealth in later life. He has steadily chipped away at progressive politicians' most treasured policy ambitions. "By 18 or 20 your life is largely mapped out for you," he argues. "You'll either have interesting jobs where you use your mind your whole life, or your life will be working in a servile occupation."
The answers, he suggests, lie in the concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of the rich - and the government's failure to address it with, for example, more progressive taxation. As a Labour voter, he says New Labour's failure to tackle the flourishing wealth of the already rich is "very odd because there's more and more evidence that shows that having more and more rich people in a place is bad for people in that place".

Dorling admits that things might have been even worse had the Conservatives been re-elected in 1997, but the figures are, he feels, an indictment of Labour none the less." (The Guardian, February 2006)

Dorling writes that "this is the first supposedly progressive government that has seen inequalities widen under it. Wasn't New Labour supposed at least to be about equality of opportunity? We've not only gone back to 1930s levels of inequalities between places but we are on the reverse trajectory. It's not just that things are unequal, it is that we are heading towards dramatic levels of future inequality between areas."

"The key thing is recognising what's happening. Just wanting something to be better doesn't mean it happens. They thought [in the mid 90s] that by not doing really horrible things, things would get better; thinking that moving the rudder slightly would help" (Dorling 2006).

The edited version will be online soon.

The Yorkshire and Humber Teaching Public Health Network - http://www.yhtphn.co.uk/

Talking Points: Why are inequalities in health greater now than at any times since the 1920s? - http://www.yhtphn.co.uk/index.php?id=326

To download Professor Danny Dorling's biography please click here.

Photo courtesy of Catherine Grinold.