Fighting Inequalities in Health and Income: One Important Road to Welfare and Social Development

Abstract

The micro-level relationship between poverty and economic resources in general, on the one hand, and health, on the other, has a long history. A famous example from the past is Friedrich Engels The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels 1969/1845). Today, there is still a clear relationship between economic resources and health, even in the Nordic welfare states (Rahkonen et al. 2000; Fritzell, Nermo and Lundberg 2004). In addition, it has been claimed that public health is better in countries and communities characterized by a more egalitarian distribution of income and wealth (Wilkinson 1992, 1996), although this claim has been debated (Kawachi and Kennedy 1999; Lynchet al. 2000; Marmot and Wilkinson 2001; Mackenbach 2002).