Whether inequalities in health and length of life are widening, and where

The gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of England is around a decade, and in healthy life expectancy about twice that; those figures are the best-known in the field, and the trend behind them is the question. Through the 2010s the gap widened in the United Kingdom, driven by mortality in the poorest areas stalling or rising while it kept falling elsewhere; the pandemic then fell hardest on the same places. The United States shows the same shape with larger numbers and a sharper racial dimension. Continental Europe is more varied: Nordic countries have small gaps that are nonetheless growing; Southern Europe's are smaller still. The measurement is robust — area deprivation, income, education all give the same ordering — but the mechanisms are contested: how much is behaviour, how much circumstance, how much access to care, and whether the widening reflects austerity, drug deaths, or the changing composition of who lives where. The direction is clear; the explanation and the response are not.

Status

established

Direction

strengthening

Would change our view

Post-pandemic data showing the gap narrowing in a country where it had been widening; or a decomposition that assigns the widening to causes across countries rather than one.

Trackers

Gaps

Comparable deprivation measures across countries; data by occupation rather than area; anything on inequality within Japan and Korea, which are rarely studied this way.