A very interesting question indeed. We know that there is a correlation between ill-health and low income.
However, is it low incomes that create ill-health, as we are often told, or is it that ill-health creates low incomes, as some would insist?
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Its not as simple as that really.
Health can be a proxy for a wide range of factors and is really such a wide concept – is it physical, mental – is it related to health due to diet, nutrition, lifestyle, working practices?
And low income can be a proxy for a range of factors. It might not necessarily be the low income which is the factor influencing the results. e.g. is low income a proxy for low education, which translates into lack of understanding of health issues/lifestyle?
Or do low income neighbourhoods get disenfranchised in terms of health services – i.e. less able to get a hospital on their doorstep than vociferous middle class neighbourhoods?
There’s a vast amount of research on this really.
Its a typical dilemma of large scale survey based work and statistical correlation. High correlation infers that there is a strong likelihood of one factor occurring at the same time as another. But this doesn’t prove a causal link or the direction of a causal link.
However, there’s ways around it – most researchers follow up to clarify results with more in depth patient studies, household interviews and the like.
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