The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published ‘Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Scotland 2013’, produced by the New Policy Institute. This is JRF’s sixth assessment of poverty in Scotland.
The report is an excellent overview of poverty in Scotland using the latest data. It covers child poverty and the impact of welfare cuts on those in work and those who are unemployed. Overall, they highlight that the number of working-age adults in poverty remained unchanged over the decade to 2010/11, but there were changes from workless families to working families and from those with dependent children to those without.
The health section highlights three main points:
§ Health inequalities in Scotland are not only stark but growing. A boy born in the poorest tenth of areas can expect to live 14 years less than one born in the least deprived tenth. For girls, the difference is eight years.
§ Rates of mortality for heart disease (100 per 100,000 people aged under 75) are twice as high in deprived areas as the Scottish average.
§ Cancer mortality rates in the poorest areas (200 per 100,000) are 50% higher than average, and have not fallen in the last decade, while the average has fallen by one-sixth.
The report may not be a surprise, but it does add to a growing body of work in recent months on health inequalities in Scotland.
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