Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Thanks to Chris Burford for pointing this out. The argument was that
> inequality itself was a risk factor for population health - in other
> words, given two countries at similar income levels, the more unequal
> one would be sicker. Broader studies have refuted the thesis. The
> whole package of papers is available on the BMJ website - just follow
> the links from the edit. Christopher Jencks told me that he did
> research into this topic and found that you could make the relation
> between inequality appear or disappear by tweaking your equations.]
>
> BMJ 2002;324:1-2 ( 5 January )
> <http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7328/1>
>
> Editorials
>
> Income inequality and population health
>
> Evidence favouring a negative correlation between income inequality
> and life expectancy has disappeared
>
> In 1992, the BMJ published a now famous paper showing a strong
> negative correlation between income inequality and life expectancy.
> Among nine Western industrialised countries those which had less
> income inequality seemed to have higher life expectancy.1 A few years
> later this was replicated in analyses looking at income inequality
> and mortality in states within the United Statesanalyses which seemed
> more secure because of having more and better quality data. 2 3 These
> findings, which suggested that income inequality is bad for the
> health of the whole population and not only for those with the lowest
> incomes, were seen to have important implications. Reducing the
> inequality would be in everyone's interest, including those with
> higher incomes.
>
> A novel area of research was born, adding new perspectives to
> conventional studies of health inequalities. These had tended to
> focus on relations between socioeconomic factors and health of the
> individual, while the findings on income inequality suggested that
> contextual effects of inequality might be just as important.
> Considerable dissent, however, emerged on the explanation of these
> effects. Some favoured softer psychosocial pathways (for example
> through feelings of relative deprivation, or disruption of social
> cohesion) while others favoured harder material pathways (for example
> through underinvestment in public resources).4-6 Support was found
> for some of these mechanisms, which are also important in their own
> right, and the debate on income inequality versus mortality acted as
> a strong stimulus for further work on factors such as social cohesion
> and social capital.7 Although most of the papers dealt with mortality
> or life expectancy as measures of the health of the population,
> results from geographical analyses within the United States suggested
> possible effects of income inequality on self rated health as well.8
>
> All along, however, critical questions were being asked about the
> quality and interpretation of the data. In an early exchange, serious
> criticisms of the selection of countries, the quality of the data,
> and the lack of control for confounding in the BMJ paper of 1992 were
> only half countered. 9 10 Although many aspects of this debate are
> still unresolved, it has recently become clear that the findings in
> that paper were an artefact of the selection of countries. Now that
> good data on income inequality have become available for 16 western
> industrialised countries, the association between income inequality
> and life expectancy has disappeared.
>
> [...]