SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
London, United Kingdom - A decade of "austerity" - a political programme of slashing public spending on services in a bid to reduce government budget deficits - has seen significant effects on the health and wellbeing of Britons, new research has reported.
Life expectancy has stalled and mortality rates have increased, especially for the poorest in the United Kingdom, according to a report commissioned by the Institute of Health Equity.
The report, Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review Ten Years On, was launched on Tuesday and sees Sir Michael Marmot, a former president of the World Medical Association, updating his influential 2010 report, having been asked by the then-Labour government to study the question: "Is inequality making us sick?"
Marmot's latest research analysed a wealth of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Public Health England to explore what has happened since his last landmark report. And the answer can only be summarised as: Not only is inequality making us sick but it is killing us quicker.
In the past decade - for the first time in 120 years of increasing life expectancy in England - life expectancy has stalled for those people living in the UK's 10 percent most deprived areas, particularly in the northeast.
Among women from the most deprived areas - especially British women of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin - life expectancy fell between 2010-2012 and again between 2016-2018.
Mortality rates have meanwhile increased for people aged between 45 and 49 - the generation that grew up under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's administrations. The report details how life expectancy follows the social gradient - the more deprived the area, the shorter the life expectancy.
Marmot's data analysis finds that, as the social gradient has become steeper, so inequalities in life expectancy have also increased.
Austerity has adversely affected the social determinants that impact on health in the short, medium and long term. Austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects
:- Professor Sir Michael Marmot
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 28 2020, @03:35AM (2 children)
Trade deficit, yes, but only very short term. Overspending can quickly devalue your currency to the levels where manufacturing picks back up and your export economy grows. Of course it also makes it impossible to afford anything not produced domestically, including raw materials. Also, when you devalue your currency too rapidly, people stop buying your bonds and using your currency. It's past my bedtime though, so I'm not going to go into why all that spells economic death for any nation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @03:55AM (1 child)
This is essentially correct. I'll add that devaluing the currency will probably lead to inflation. A small amount of inflation, say around 2%, is actually a good thing. Much higher inflation rates are harmful for reasons that should be obvious. Regarding the deficit spending that's been discussed in this thread, the only way it's really long-term sustainable is if the deficits are less than or equal to GDP growth. It's very unfortunate that both parties seem to have punted on any sort of austerity in the US, eliminating sequestration and dramatically raising spending levels. Rather than try to compromise on what we need to fund and make the difficult decisions, nobody had to lose on anything. We'll lose later on, though, but both parties are happy to kick that can down the road.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 02 2020, @04:16AM
On. The. Nose.
I just didn't want to go into greater detail because apparently the basics are too much for most folks to handle.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.