RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Increasing socioeconomic gap between the young and old: temporal trends in health and overall deprivation in England by age, sex, urbanity and ethnicity, 2004–2015
JF Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
JO J Epidemiol Community Health
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
SP 636
OP 644
DO 10.1136/jech-2017-209895
VO 72
IS 7
A1 Evangelos Kontopantelis
A1 Mamas A Mamas
A1 Harm van Marwijk
A1 Iain Buchan
A1 Andrew M Ryan
A1 Tim Doran
YR 2018
UL http://jech.bmj.com/content/72/7/636.abstract
AB Background At a low geographical level, little is known about the associations between population characteristics and deprivation, and their trends, which would be directly affected by the house market, labour pressures and government policies. We describe temporal trends in health and overall deprivation in England by age, sex, urbanity and ethnicity.Methods Repeated cross-sectional whole population study for England, 2004–2015, at a low geographical level (average 1500 residents). We calculated weighted medians of the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) for each subgroup of interest.Results Over time, we observed increases in relative deprivation for people aged under 30, and aged 30–59, while median deprivation decreased for those aged 60 or over. Subgroup analyses indicated that relative overall deprivation was consistently higher for young adults (aged 20–29) and infants (aged 0–4), with increases in deprivation for the latter. Levels of overall deprivation in 2004 greatly varied by ethnicity, with the lowest levels observed for White British and the highest for Blacks. Over time, small reductions were observed in the deprivation gap between White British and all other ethnic groups. Findings were consistent across overall IMD and its health and disability subdomain, but large regional variability was also observed.Conclusions Government policies, the financial crisis of 2008, education funding and the increasing cost of houses relative to real wages are important parameters in interpreting our findings. Socioeconomic deprivation is an important determinant of health and the inequalities this work highlights may have significant implications for future fiscal and healthcare policy.