In U.S. wellness is based on income

Americans should be living four years longer at current rates of healthcare spending, signalling that US society is helping to make people sicker, a report on health inequality said on Thursday.

The report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), an influential US philanthropy, presented new evidence of widening disparities in health between income levels in the United States.

The nation’s poorest adults were nearly five times more likely to be in “poor or fair” health as the richest - 31 per cent versus 6.6 per cent - and at every income level the wealthier group was healthier than the next lower one.

This trend of declining health according to income was seen in all race groups. Although socioeconomic factors are “harshest” on the poorest, the report said, “economic inequality has increased in the United States and the middle-class has lost ground.”

Financial Times