The stark divide in health expectations between the UK’s rich and poor was laid bare in official data released Thursday.
(Bloomberg) — The stark divide in health expectations between the UK’s rich and poor was laid bare in official data released Thursday.
The highest proportion of people reporting “very good health” at 58% was in Kensington and Chelsea, the west London borough whose occupants have the city’s highest wages, according to 2021 Census figures from the Office for National Statistics.
Just a few miles away, residents in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets -– the capital’s most deprived -— reported the highest rate of “very bad health” in England and Wales, at 2.5%.
The gap highlights the challenge facing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government to “level up” poorer parts of the country, a pledge first made by his predecessor Boris Johnson in 2019. Polling suggests Sunak will struggle to retain “Red Wall” voters -— traditional Labour supporters who turned Conservative at the last general election.
The gulf also has implications for the economy as firms struggle to recruit workers due to a steep rise in the number of people dropping out of the labor force, with many citing long-term ill health as their reason for becoming economically inactive. Labor shortages have contributed to the highest inflation in decades.
Health tends to be worst in the poorest areas of the country -– leading to a vicious cycle as more workers drop out of their jobs, and companies choose to invest in alternative areas where more people are vying for jobs.
The North East was the region in England with the highest rate of bad health, at almost 7% of the local population. It also happens to have the highest income poverty, according to ONS data collected between April 2018 and March 2020, at 29%.
And it has the highest inactivity rate -– meaning people are out of work and not looking for a job –- at 24.8%, according to official figures.
But officials may take some hope from the fact that the proportion of people reporting very good health has increased over the last decade, from 45% to 47.5% in England and 45.7% to 46.6% in Wales.
In another sign that physical wellbeing was improving, the proportion of people in very bad health decreased in both England and Wales.
The figures from 2021 may come as a surprise, as the country was still in the grips of Covid and the National Health Service was forced to postpone all but essential procedures.
But NHS backlogs grew throughout 2022, raising concerns that general health could be back on the decline.
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