BMJ  2008;336 (16 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39490.460162.DE

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Health, wealth, and politics

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

The idea that, in a developed country, more equal distribution of wealth is associated with better health is remarkably provocative. Can it be true? Is it a scientific or political theory? Does it have any place in a general medical journal?

The BMJ pitched into this debate more than 10 years ago with a series of articles introduced by Richard Wilkinson, currently professor of social epidemiology in Nottingham (www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/314/7080/591). Now Tony Blakely and colleagues shed further light on the Wilkinson hypothesis (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39455.596181.25). They examined trends in mortality in a natural experiment in New Zealand during the l980s and 1990s, when economic reforms led to rapidly increasing and then decreasing levels of poverty and unemployment and widening income inequality. Overall, people in all income groups got healthier over time. But the gaps in mortality between people on high, middle, and low incomes widened as social inequalities increased: . . . [Full text of this article]

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