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Effects of poverty on health
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The health risks of people in the lower class are higher than the health risks of people in higher classes. This includes a variety of individuals ranging from newborns to the older adult population. In a study done by mvonvoskm, it was reported that 33% of children in lower class families had less than very good health and only 7% of children from upper class families were reported of having less than very good health. Adults in the lower class are at higher risk for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis. It even has an effect on their life expectancy. The data shows that the wealthiest adults live about four and a half years longer than the poorest people in America. People in the lower class have higher health risks than people in higher classes for several reasons. These reasons include stress levels, living location, access to healthcare, and lack of education. …show more content…
They experience high levels of stress because they most likely do not have any job which means that they do not have money to pay for the everyday things that they need in life (Citation). Which can be even more stressful if they have a family to take care. Stress, especially chronic stress, has many negative effects on a person’s health. Some ways that stress effects health are chronic headaches/migraines, muscle tension, immune system problems, obesity due to stress eating and poor diet, health risks that come with being obesity, chest pain, and fatigue. All of those problems caused by stress, can have a snowball effect and turn into much larger issues. For example, stress causes people to be lose sleep, and sleep deprivation leads to other serious health issues (Mayo Clinic
People in lower classes are more likely to get sicker more often and to die quicker. People in metro Louisville reveal 5- and 10-year gaps in life expectancy between the city’s rich, middle- and working-class neighborhoods. Those who live in the working class neighborhood face more stressors like unpaid bills, jobs that pay little to nothing, unsafe living conditions, and the fewest resources available to help them, all of these contribute to the health issues.
Germov (2015: 87-93) states that the most common explanations of health inequality can be grouped into five main categories. These five categories are artifact explanations, natural/social selection explanation, cultural/behavioral explanation, materialist/structural explanations, and psycho-social/social capital explanation of the social gradient of health. Basically, health inequality has to do with what your status is as an individual, cultural, economic, as well as education level. In the textbook, Germov (2015: 516) defines the term social gradient of health “as a continuum of health inequality in most countries from high to low.” Meaning the poorest group has the worst health status, while each group above the poorest has a better health status. An example of this injustice would be the indigenous
Those who live more sedentary life styles are at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, all things that effect lower-socioeconomic groups more often than those in higher income brackets. Those who are less educated are also twice as likely to smoke cigarettes as the most educated.
Variations in life expectancy and its changes are one major cause of rising income inequality. How long a person lives, as well as their quality of health, can have an important and huge impact on their income and social mobility. The life expectancy of the bottom 10% increases at only half the rate that the life expectancy of the top 10% does (Belsie). This shows that improvements in medicine benefit the wealthy more than the poor. The less wealthy have decreased access to good medical insurance and cannot afford more expensive, quality medical care. The poor are less likely to invest in healthy food and exercise, lowering life expectancy and overall health. These changes result in a cycle that causes the poor to be less healthy, and the less healthy to become increasingly poor. On the other side, the rich have different variations of habits, education, and environments, which can affect life expectancy, often positively for the
Health inequality is part of American life, intertwined and entangled with other social problems; gaps in income, education, age, race and gender. Gaps that social analysts cannot say for sure which factors are cause and which are effect. The unclear outcome is a huge chicken-and-egg puzzle, its solution reaching beyond health care. Because of that, everyday realities often control whether people live in health or in illness, to a ripe old age or early death. Clearly, poverty affects some groups more than others. The relationships between social class and general well being are persistent and troublesome; even in the twenty first century, life looks different for those belonging to upper and middle social classes compared to the lower social classes (Parsons 1942: 7).
Disparities in cancer are caused by the complex interaction of low economic status, culture, and social injustice, with poverty playing the dominant role (Freeman, 2004). So I ask the question: Does socioeconomics impact a man’s prostate health?
Socioeconomic Disparities and health are growing at a rapid rate throughout the United States of America. To further understand the meaning of Socioeconomic Disparities, Health and Socioeconomic disparities & health, this essay will assist in providing evidence. Disparities can be defined in many ways, of which include ethnic and racial background and class types that deal with it the most. Due to the low income some individuals receive, they have less access to health care and are at risk for major health issues. Although, ethnicity and socioeconomic status should not determine the level of health care one should receive or whether not the individual receives healthcare.
a lot of stress in their lives and cannot deal with it as easily as
Socio-economic class or socio-economic status (SES) may refer to mixture of various factors such as poverty, occupation and environment. It is a way of measuring the standard and quality of life of individuals and families in society using social and economic factors that affect health and wellbeing ( Giddens and Sutton, 2013). Cockerham (2007 p75) argues: ‘Social class or socioeconomic status (SES) is the strongest predictor of health, disease causation and longevity in medical sociology.’ Research in the 1990s, (Drever and Whitehead, 1997) found out that people in higher SES are generally healthier, and live longer than those in lower SES.
Being born into an economically disadvantaged family causes dilemmas before the kid is even born. According to Gulick, “Economically disadvantaged students have it tougher before they are born because they have less prenatal care if any at all” (1). Because the babies do not even have the care they need before they are born they end up being born with things that aren’t good. “Children born into poverty have lower birth weights, and many suffer from hunger and poor nutrition. When the youth suffer from poor nutrition and low birth rates it causes many complications for the hospital staff, the babies family, and causes stress on whoever pays the medical bill because the baby possible has to stay at the hospital longer. Once the kid is born the dilemmas go on and on. So how does being economically disadvantage affect people?
...0). This should be considered when measuring the impact of the evidence illustrated in table 1. While investigation is still in its infancy, researchers are examining the influence of different dimensions of social class and its various associations with health, thus allowing more accurate connections to be made. For example, improvements have been made to the classification process with the introduction of the NS-SEC. Widely regarded as a more precise measure than the Registrar General’s Social Class classification, and now widely used in ONS, the NS-SEC addressed many of the discrepancies associated with the old classification (Donkin et al., 2002b). This classification is present in the evidence illustrated in table 2 and figure 1. Both sets of evidence clearly demonstrate that health inequalities, in relation to social class, have increased in the 21st century.
Since the black report of 1988, it has been clearly identified and approved that people from the lowest social group experience the poorest health in society. The better social class you have the better health services you will get; this is because if you have a higher social class it means that you have the money to get medicines and see the best health professionals so therefore it means that they are more likely to recover rapidly but for the people with a very low social class when they are ill they would struggle to get the money to buy medicines for their recovery.
It’s very important that people know how much sleep they need. Sleeping improves people’s health while lack of sleep causes detriment
A survey was done to find out that “stress might be getting in the way of sleep”. The survey was towards young adults who received less than the required amount of sleep, which is seven to nine hours of sleep a night. These adults received roughly 6.7 hours of sleep a night. A majority of the group reported that stress caused them to not be able to get a good nights rest. They would lie on their bed, wide-awake and have their minds running constantly thinking and
Swaminathan, Nikhil. "Can a Lack of Sleep Cause Psychiatric Disorders?" Scientific American. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2016.