BACKGROUND To better understand income-related inequalities in health care use, it is imperative to identify sources of inequalities and assess the extent to which health care use is still related to income after differences in need across the income distribution are accounted for. Little is known regarding rural-urban differences in income-related inequalities and subgroup variation in horizon...

BACKGROUND Socioeconomic inequalities in health outcomes have increased over the past few decades in some countries. However, the trends in inequalities related to multiple health risk behaviours have been infrequently reported. In this study, we examined the trends in individual health risk behaviours and a summary lifestyle risk index in New South Wales, Australia, and whether the absolute an...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Sri Lanka has been able to achieve low childhood mortality levels at low cost. However, this achievement may have been at the expense of increasing mortality inequalities between socio-economic groups. This study addresses the question whether socio-economic mortality inequalities rise as overall mortality falls by describing socio-economic inequalities in under 5 mortali...

Background Comparisons among countries can help to identify opportunities for the reduction of inequalities in health. We compared the magnitude of inequalities in mortality and selfassessed health among 22 countries in all parts of Europe. Methods We obtained data on mortality according to education level and occupational class from census-based mortality studies. Deaths were classified accord...

BACKGROUND: Currently, poor-rich inequalities in health in developing countries receive a lot of attention from both researchers and policy makers. Since measuring economic status in developing countries is often problematic, different indicators of wealth are used in different studies. Until now, there is a lack of evidence on the extent to which the use of different measures of economic statu...

In vol.78, issue no.1 of the Bulletin, Davidson Gwatkin’s critical reflection (1) argues that strategies such as primary health care within the health-for-all concept have failed to address inequalities in health, and that new ones are needed to deal more effectively with the problems of poverty and ill-health. In this context, he mentions a new strategy to be developed by a task force establis...

Accepted for publication 24 February 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D espite ample empirical evidence of socioeconomic differences in health since the mid-19th century, concern about the problem of measurement of health inequalities did not appear until 1991. In that year, Wagstaff et al cautioned that the conclusions reached by different authors about trends in health inequ...