Social disparities in health outcomes in England have been widening, not narrowing, in the early years of the government's drive to reduce class inequalities in health by 2010, says a status report commissioned by the Department of Health.

In 2002 the government set a target to reduce by 10% the degree to which the fifth of local authorities with the worst figures in infant mortality and life expectancy fall below the national average, compared with a 1997-9 baseline figure.

But the class gap in health has actually been growing, the statistics show. In 2001-3 infant mortality among the families of “routine and manual” workers was 19% higher—at six deaths in every 1000 live births—than the national average. In 1997-9 infant mortality in this social group had been 13% higher than the national average and in 1999-2001 it had been 17% higher. Infant mortality …