Health and social inequality in Europe Classification used in paper was misleading

BMJ 1994;309:57-58 (2 July)

Letters

Health and social inequality in Europe Classification used in paper was misleading

EDITOR, - In a recent article¹ Chris Power summarised the resultsof two studies which we did on socioeconomic health inequalitiesin different industrialised countries.^2,3 Unfortunately, thebox summarising these results contains some inaccuracies whichwe would like to see corrected. Apart from the incorrect referencefigures in the title of the box, the main problem is that ouroriginal distinctions in four groups of countries for the sizeof mortality differentials, and three groups of countries forthe size of morbidity differentials, have been replaced by asimple distinction into two classes (low and high, with theintermediate groups all allocated to the low category).

This produces several misleading impressions, such as that mortalitydifferentials in the United States (medium high in our originalclassification) are low on an international scale. A correctversion of the box is reproduced below. The information refersto adult men only.

Our current . . . [Full text of this article]

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