TACKLING HEALTH INEQUALITIES – AN NHS RESPONSE 1. The problem of health inequalities in Scotland

Scotland’s health, when compared to other Western European countries is relatively poor. As judged by life expectancy at birth, only Portugal has a lower life expectancy for males and there are no Western European countries whose females have a lower life expectancy. Figure 1 shows the trend in male life expectancy during the 20 century in Scotland and in 16 other Western European countries. It can be seen that in the early part of the 20 century, Scottish males had a life expectancy which was the average for Western Europe. In keeping with other countries, there were significant improvements until the middle of the 20 century when life expectancy improvements slowed for all countries. The improvement in Scotland’s life expectancy slowed rather more than average so that by the year 2000 we had fallen to the bottom of the league table.