BMJ  2005;330:1507 (25 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7506.1507-a

Letter

Health inequalities under New Labour

Difference in findings is due to geographical coverage

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Shaw et al argue that any study that does not use the recently released, final revised population estimates will produce erroneous results, citing a paper by one of us (MB), which showed a narrowing of the life expectancy gap in England.1 2

How much do revisions to population estimates influence the conclusions and can this alone account for the apparently different conclusions in the two papers?

Bajekal used the unrevised population estimates from the 1991 census rolled forward, but this mainly produces a difference in scale rather than direction of trends from the use of revised figures. We found that the conclusions of Shaw et al would still have differed from those of Bajekal had they used unrevised populations.

Both studies examined differential trends in life expectancy between 10ths of populations grouped by deprivation and covering almost the same period. We propose that the reason for the discrepancy in . . . [Full text of this article]

Madhavi Bajekal, head, Morbidity and Healthcare Team

madhavi.bajekal@ons.gov.uk
Office for National Statistics, London SW1V 2QQ

Allan Baker, senior researcher

Office for National Statistics, London SW1V 2QQ


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Health inequalities and New Labour: how the promises compare with real progress
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